On the Wings of an Eagle

by FernandelDeLaFrance

Near the end of his life, Ezio Auditore, once Mentor of the Assassins, decides to serve his order with his dying breath by retrieving an ancient artefact. To his surprise, it whisks him away to a strange country of magic, where old eagles fly again...

9. Chapter IX – The More Things Change

DO NOTE that this story IS NOT endorsed by the original holders of the intellectual rights or copyrights mentioned at the end of this chapter. This is a work of fanfiction based on the original work and its associated franchise, with the intent to amuse and distract its readers. There is absolute no intent to make money or otherwise deny the original copyright holders their given due. Should the original holders of the copyright be offended by my use of their rightful property, I will gladly take it down in accordance with the Terms of Service of this website. Please support the official release(s) mentioned below.

…

Good day or good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the ninth chapter of On The Wings Of An Eagle!

(Oh, and Happy New Year and Easter, to those who celebrate it!)

I'll admit that I am very, very surprised that people keep on reading this story, even if the last update was a whopping five months ago! To all those who kept reading, even when I was being a most unsporting author: thank you, thank you, thank you.

This story has nearly four hundred reviews and close to a thousand members following and/or favouriting it. I really never really expected this sort of viewer response for my first story, and I am deeply grateful for it.

You always told me when you liked the story, when you thought that some parts needed improvement, or when you thought I was going off on a dangerous path… Your genuine enthusiasm for this story (when I sometimes had very little of it myself) was one of the things that kept me and this story going.

Now, as for the explanation why this update is so horrifically late: lots and lots of reasons. The main one is related to me taking many new, important, and difficult classes at university. I won't elaborate on them here (because I'm paranoid like that), but suffice to say that I spend most of my time reading thick books that would bore most of you to tears, because you are sensible people and not utterly insane.

The second reason is that I've been trying to be more of an outgoing person: more sports, joining various musical and student groups, generally being more of a social butterfly (believe me, applying that term to me is very, very weird)… All of which cuts into my very limited free time.

Third, I'm still looking for a job. Might be successful soon, but let's see first.

And fourth, I'm planning a new story. And by new story, I'm planning to write something in a completely genre and style from what I'm used to. Which means hours and hours of research, discussions with fellow authors and friends like Wing Zero Alpha, reading so that I can get an insight into different styles… You get the picture.

On the other hand… any fans of Code Geass here? Keep your eyes peeled; you might get something interesting from me soon.

People have told me that I spend too much time focussing on my other stories instead of this one. These people have a point. However, I need to explain something important: writing is my hobby. This is why my stories spend pages describing architecture, or why I suddenly decide to write an Avatar noir-mystery in the first person instead of working on Wings, or why my updates take ages… I like to experiment, to try out different things. I don't feel rushed by update schedules.

I know this sounds heartless when I tell it to folks like you who are patiently waiting for months for me to finally update, but I don't mean it in a bad way. When I write, I want things to be perfect. When you read about a character, I want you to see that character. When I describe a city to you, I want you to see the streets of that city, hear it, smell it. And when characters die, get hurt, make mistakes, or fall in love, I want you to feel the punch of that right in the gut.

And if it takes me far longer to get that right, then I will take the time. I think it's worth it. You guys are an awesome audience. You deserve the best I can give you.

Still, I'm very sorry that you had to wait this long for an update. I hope this chapter somehow makes up for it.

Right, explanation time is officially over. To follow: forty pages in the beautiful city of Tristain, with its towers, politics, and darkness creeping below the ornate surface…

Please, enjoy yourself while reading this story, and whether you liked or disliked it, be kind enough to leave a review. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.

…

On The Wings Of An Eagle

Chapter IX – The More Things Change…

…

"Louise?" Ezio asked cautiously over his shoulder as they cantered slowly along the road. "Are you alright?"

The young noble had been unusually quiet for the last hour or so, something that Ezio found increasingly worrying. He had soon realized Louise was not someone that particularly liked silence. She was always talking, asking him questions or haranguing him in some way or another if she was angry or bored, if only to remind herself that she was not alone anymore. Her being quiet was not a good sign.

Ezio grabbed the reins in one hand, slowing down to let Louise's horse close the distance. He reached out to nudge Louise's shoulder with an armoured glove. "Piccina, please talk to me—"

He managed to loosen one stirrup just in time to dodge the explosion spell she sent his way.

'That one was intentionally underpowered,' a part of Ezio's mind noted idly as he hung low from one side of his saddle, watching as a tree off the side of the road lost half its leaves as the spell impacted against its trunk. He was mildly impressed. 'She is learning to control her spells, it seems.'

Ezio carefully peeked over his own saddle, smiling brightly as Louise glared at him. "I assume you are not particularly happy with me, vero?"

"Two days," Louise said slowly, still glaring. "We've been riding to the capital for two days already, and we've only stopped to eat and sleep! Not for the rain, not for the cold, not when those bandits tried to rob us—"

"Running was the better option then, you know," Ezio chided her as he straightened back. "They might have killed us, otherwise."

"I don't care!" Louise screeched, her eye twitching. "What I'm saying, Ezio, is that we've been riding for two days already, we've only stopped once today to eat something, and my butt is sorer than I ever thought was possible! I'm tired, damn it!"

And that was another thing that had surprised Ezio. He had learned to ride early in life, the stable-lad on their family's estate in Monteriggioni showing him all the tricks of taking care of a horse in his youth. His father had insisted on it.

Louise, on the other hand, had never learned how to properly fasten a saddle so that a horse didn't get its back rubbed raw and bloody, or how to calm down a horse enough so that you could lift its leg to scratch out the dirt stuck in its hooves, or how to fit a bridle and bit, or how to brush a horse's mane and wash it, or how to stick your arm down a horse's anus and unclog its bowels when it had eaten something it couldn't digest. Apparently, the grooms at the Vallière estate had undertaken all these messy tasks, leaving the duke's youngest child remarkably ignorant about how to care for a horse.

Ezio had found it incredibly stupid and told her so, touching off another tantrum on her part. It didn't stop him from forcing her to take care of her own horse whenever she tried to hand off these tasks to the landlords of the inns they stayed at.

In retrospect, Ezio thought, forcing Louise to clean up her own horse's droppings in the stables might have contributed to the foul mood she was in now. He glanced at her out of the corner of his cloak's hood, and found her still glowering at him. He quickly looked away, trying to look innocent.

It might have annoyed her after all. Just a little bit.

He clicked his tongue sharply and snapped the reins, the warhorse cantering faster along the wide road leading to the city of Tristain. Behind him, he heard Louise curse under her breath, but she soon managed to get her horse to catch up to him.

He smiled briefly to himself. Before, she had had trouble to get her horse to point the right way. Necessity was the greatest teacher, it seemed.

"…Hey, Ezio."

"Si, piccina?"

"Can we stop soon?" Louise pleaded. "We're still half a day's ride from the city, and it's already growing dark. I don't want to camp in the woods."

"Sleeping under the stars might be a good experience for you, you know," he said, grinning at her.

The young noble shuddered violently. "Don't even joke about that," she muttered. "The nights here are dangerous, Ezio. At night, the wildlings raid, the orcs pillage, and all sorts of unpleasantness creeps out of its hiding spots. Why do you think that all the villages we passed were surrounded by palisades? And why they closed the gates after letting us in so late?"

"Va bene," Ezio agreed, seeing her troubled look. "We'll stop at the next inn, alright?"

"Where is it, then?"

Good question. Ezio pulled on his bridle, peering at the landscape around him from the crest of the hill they stood on. They had followed the briskly travelled road for two days now, crossing paths with the caravans, merchants, and families travelling to and from the Academy. The road had run along a wide and coursing river for a while – Louise said it flowed from the Forêts Obscures towards the sea, with no soul brave or foolish enough to travel all the way upriver to find its source – but it had soon diverged, and they had ridden through cultivated plains, hills with grazing animals, and the occasional dense wood that seemed far safer than the ones through which Ezio had tracked Matilda, but still entirely different than the ones he knew from home.

And now, as the sun was setting on the horizon of Tristain and stinging Ezio's eyes, he had to admit that he couldn't spot a convenient inn for them to stop.

"Isn't that a peasant down there?" Louise suddenly said, pointing down the hill.

"You have sharp eyes," Ezio commented when he finally spotted the small cart ambling down the road. He had somehow missed it.

Louise laughed to herself. "Cattleya used to take me into the woods of our estate to look for rare birds and insects. I always found them, and she would try to catch and tame them. Well," she said, her voice growing soft, "that was before she fell ill, of course…"

"Andiamo, Louise!" Ezio said loudly, snapping her out of her reverie. "Do you want to waste any more daylight or not?"

"I said I was coming!"

He laughed and snapped his reins, throwing the Musketeer's horse into a gallop with Louise close behind him. Soon, they had reached the rickety cart pulled by a pair of oxen, the huge animals being driven onward by their owner.

"Salute, my friend!" Ezio called out, tugging on the reins and waving at the older man with a smile. "Is there an inn or a hospice somewhere up the road?"

"Dunno what ye're looking for, pal," the man said crabbily, glaring at Ezio from underneath the brim of his cap.

"Oh, just a place to stay for the night for me and my friend," Ezio said conversationally, apparently not put off by the man's attitude. "Do you know if there is a place that would take us in?"

"Dunno about that," the ox-driver answered curtly. "Last village was a few miles back, s'far as I know. You fellas must'a missed it."

"Perhaps," Ezio agreed amiably. "What I was asking, though, was if there was an inn or some similar establishment further down the road?"

"Why don't ye go and look yerself, nancyboy?" the man retorted, annoyed.

"Listen to me, commoner!" Louise hissed, throwing back the hood of her riding cloak and glaring heatedly at the old peasant, who jumped in fright when he recognized the Academy's uniform she wore underneath her cloak. "You will answer his question, do you understand?! And you will be polite about it, or else!"

"Pardon me, milady," the man muttered, quickly doffing his cap and bowing frantically. "Didn't realize that you were noble folks, milord and milady; truly sorry about me rudeness an' all—"

"Answer his question already!" Louise snapped, her horse whinnying softly.

"Beggin' yer pardon, me good sir," the peasant said hurriedly, bowing again. "There's an inn about a two miles further down the road, just follow it up the hill and you'll find it soon enough. 'S a good place, it's got a stable an' all, and—"

"That's good enough, grazie," Ezio said politely, smiling down at him.

The man looked up at the two of them, fear in his eyes as they jumped from him to Louise, and Ezio couldn't help but find it disquieting.

"Bah!" Louise snapped her reins, looking away in disgusted annoyance. "What else to expect from a commoner, really," she muttered as she urged her horse down the road.

"Here." Ezio reached into his pouch, tossing a silver coin at the peasant. The man caught it, surprised. "For the pains in your back," he added with a smile. The old man's bowed back and slightly crooked spine hadn't escaped him.

The old peasant just stared at him as he turned the coin over in his hands, bewildered. Ezio reached down and patted him on the shoulder, nudging his horse to ride past his cart.

"Founder bless ye, milord!" he heard the old man call out after him, and he briefly smiled to himself as he galloped to catch up to Louise. She was still seething when he caught up to her.

"Boorish, uneducated, common piece of dirt," she muttered under her breath, her jaw locked tight as she glared ahead. Ezio said nothing.

"…What were you doing with him?" Louise asked as the silence dragged on.

The Florentine shrugged. "I gave him a silver coin and thanked him for helping us, Louise."

She turned to look at him, confused. "Didn't you notice how he talked to you, Ezio?"

Ezio glanced at her, his expression stoic. "Did you not notice how you talked to him, piccina?"

And with a dig of the heels and a sharp "Andiamo!", he drove his horse into a gallop, leaving behind a rather puzzled young noble wondering what she had done wrong.

When they had finally stopped at the lonely inn and retired for the night – Ezio not saying a word to her all evening – Louise saw him leaning against the oaken frame of the window, looking out towards the faint lights of the capital in the distance with a pensive look on his face. She quietly wished him goodnight and went to bed, wondering what the words he spoke to no one in particular meant.

"Più le cose cambiano, più rimangono le stesse…"

…

"We're nearly there!" Louise called out, waving at him to catch up to her. She was beaming, no doubt happy at the prospect of finally joining civilization again. "Come on, Ezio!"

He just snorted in amusement, following her up the last hill. Her mood had improved the closer they got to the city, apparently having forgotten the unpleasantness of their travels so far.

The noble girl clumsily reined in her horse at the top of the hill, turning around to smile at him. "Look at the city, Ezio!" she cajoled him, throwing out an arm to indicate the expanse of the city below. "Isn't it beautiful?"

From so far away, he had to agree that the city seemed pittoresque: surrounded by a circle or rolling green hills, a wide blue river snaking through the basin, the capital of Tristain stood on the shores of the coursing water. A large cathedral rose into the sky at the very centre of the city, stone arches and bows leaping out like the branches of a tree from its main nave. Opposite it on the other side stood what looked like a palace, surrounded by high walls that enclosed green gardens and fountains. Both were as splendorous as any palazzo or place of worship in Florence or Rome, their white stonework shining brightly in the morning sun.

On both shores of the river, the city spread out for a few miles as a twisted maze of streets and buildings, the belltowers of many churches dotting the sky above it. It was densely built, and Ezio was surprised to see that most of the buildings rose far higher than was common in Italia, the interlocking red-shingled roofs reminding him of flowing waves striking rock – it must have been the work of Earth mages allowing for more construction and greater stability in architecture, he reasoned. Several wide stone bridges crossed the river, and even from so far away, he could see the busy traffic of carts, people, and barges on and under it.

The city was enclosed by high stone walls and ramparts, and he easily spotted the castellos at the mouth of the river flowing into the city and near the city's centre, the outlying artillery bastions creating funnels for any attacking force, the high watchtowers, and the reinforced gates leading into the city. He frowned as he considered the city's defences. Whoever had built them had sincerely expected war.

It looked like a beautiful city, but Ezio was wary. From the high vantage points he had always preferred, Firenze, Roma, and Constantinople had also seemed full of splendour and beauty. It had been a mere mask for the decay, corruption, and decadence of its rulers, criminals, and clergy. He recalled professore Colbert's warning words to him before their departure, and withheld judgement.

"Well?" Louise demanded, uneasy at his silence. "Don't you think it's pretty?"

Ezio glanced at her and laughed. "I've certainly seen larger cities—" he began with a twinkle in his eye.

Louise rolled her eyes. "Of course you have. According to the tales you tell that maid, you've seen everything."

"—but never one quite like this," he finished. "It has its own charm, è certo." He quirked an eyebrow at her. "How do you know about the stories that I tell signorina Siesta, in any case?"

"We've taken to chatting ever since you beat Guiche into the ground," Louise said vaguely. "She mentioned a few things every now and then."

"You chat about me?" he asked, amused.

"We don't have much else in common except knowing you," Louise said haughtily.

Ezio clamped a hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter, but a chortle escaped nonetheless.

Louise reached into her pocket for her wand, glowering at him. "Ezio…"

Ezio gave his horse a sharp jab of the heels in the flank, the animal bolting away. He heard Louise's shout of annoyance behind him and burst out into laughter as she chased him down the hill towards the bustling city.

…

They left their horses in a stable by the city gates (Ezio cheerfully showing off his many knives and making sure to get the stablehand's name, ensuring prompt service), and were soon off.

Walking through the city of a magical kingdom was a strange experience, Ezio thought. Everywhere he looked, he saw things that he thought intimately familiar – the fashion of the people he passed in the street were very much close to those worn by men and women in Florence and Rome, for example. The architecture seemed quite similar – rows of houses built closely together, decorated facades, and arches leading to inner courtyard and markets. And from the way people chatted, haggled and bantered on the streets, he could have been in any large city where life went on and money was to be made.

However, just when he nearly thought himself at home, something strange happened that made him stare: far more people wore deep hoods and cloaks than would have been acceptable in Italia, for example; mages walked the streets accompanied by their animal familiars – no matter whether they were birds, raptors, or predators and grazers large and small – with no one in the street even batting an eye, and the wares exhorted by street vendors to passersby were definitely not what he was accustomed to.

"Come closer, ladies and gents; you can get any and all of your alchemical ingredients here! I've still got eye of newt and some toe of frog left to be sold! Four bronze coins the tablespoon! First come, first get! Or leeches, are you looking for leeches? There's even some goblin blood if you're interested, freshly decanted! Purest stuff you'll find anywhere in the city, on my honour!"

Ezio stared incredulously at the hollering merchant behind his stall before turning to Louise. "Goblin blood?!" he hissed into her ear.

She just shrugged unconcernedly as they walked on. "It has some quite useful alchemical properties. I think it's also used as a solvent, but I never made use of it myself."

"What, do you have scruples about using a living animal's blood?"

She wrinkled her nose. "No, it just smells vile. It takes weeks to get the stench off your hands. Gross. So, who are we looking for again?"

Ezio shook his head, deciding not to fight the madness. "A smith called Théoleyre," he answered.

"There's a smith down that road, I think," Louise said smartly, pointing to another part of the market district.

"Do you think that it's him?"

"No, but most of the smiths are organized in one of the city's guilds. If Agnès's friend," Louise scowled briefly, "is a member, then we'll find him quickly if we just ask around."

"Smart," Ezio said approvingly.

"I have my moments," Louise said dryly.

Soon they heard the sound of striking hammers, and they found an open shop with apprentices fashioning on an anvil. The owner spotted potential customers, and his grin widened.

"Buongiorno, signore!" Ezio called out cheerfully. "We were wondering if you could help us find something we're looking for!"

"If you're looking for tools, I quite possibly have the best in the city!" the smith answered with an easy grin. "Hammers, sickles, nails, scythes, saws – anything you might possibly want to fulfil your needs! Is it anything like that, monsieur?"

"If I ever plan on becoming a carpenter, I'll return," Ezio answered easily. "However, I was looking for something else. Or someone, rather."

The smith's grin grew disappointed. "I sell tools, not gossip."

Ezio made a small movement of his hand, and a silver coin danced across his knuckles. "I'll make it worth your while, signore."

"Ask away, then."

"I'm looking for a colleague of yours. A man called Théoleyre."

The smith's face fell. "Théoleyre? What could you possibly want with him?!"

Ezio frowned. "He was recommended to me by an acquaintance."

"Some strange acquaintances you have, monsieur!" the smith scoffed.

"Why would you say that?"

"Because the man is crazy!" The smith twirled a finger near his temple. "Completely touched in the head!"

"That's a strange thing to say about a fellow smith," Louise cut in.

"Begging your pardon, mademoiselle, but that lunatic is no fellow of mine!" the smith retorted, looking offended. "That old curmudgeon has refused to join any of the guilds, saying that he had no truck with changing his prices according to the whims of fools! He only ever makes the things he pleases, he chases after dreams and fantasies, and his prices are exorbitant! It's a wonder he manages to stay in business!"

"And if I wanted to look for him anyway?" Ezio asked, idly flipping his silver coin up and down.

The smith scowled. "Go down the Rue Saint-Benoît; you'll find his shop easily enough. But if you're looking for a true armourer and weaponsmith, I can refer you to a few good colleagues of mine—"

"Mille grazie, signore, but that won't be necessary," Ezio said with a polite smile, flipping the coin at him. "Have a good day."

And before the smith could say another word, the Florentine had steered away his mistress by the shoulder.

"Well, that was encouraging," Louise commented wryly.

"Very," he agreed.

"…Ezio, I was being sarcastic."

"And I was not."

"You do know that going to a smith not affiliated with any guild usually means bad workmanship, right?" Louise asked archly.

"Usually, that would be true. But this man has refused to join any of city's guilds and yet manages to keep his business afloat. There must be something special about his ware that attracts customers. And I don't think Agnès would have recommended me to a hack."

"And how can you be so sure, pray?"

"Call it instinct. Besides," he continued, ruffling her blond hair with a laugh, "I have a certain fondness for outsiders, remember?"

"Haha, very funny," she grumbled as she shot him a glare. "You know, usually outsiders are outsiders for a reason— Hey! Watch where you're walking, you oaf!"

The man who had stumbled into her turned around and affected a sloppy bow. "Sorry, milady," he muttered lowly. "Won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't," Louise snapped, and the man nodded, keeping his head low as he turned around and walked away. "Clumsy fools everywhere…"

Ezio smirked. "I thought he was quite nimble, actually."

Louise blinked, confused. "Why would you say that?"

"Well, considering he was able to snatch your purse without you noticing…"

Louise grabbed at her belt, her eyes suddenly going as wide as saucers. "THIEF!"

Down the road, the pickpocket began to run.

Ezio laughed, taking off after him. "I'll see you at the shop, Louise!"

He hurtled around the corner of the street the thief had run off into, disappearing from view. Louise scowled, letting her head drop into her palm. She spent the rest of her way to the Rue Saint-Benoît muttering about the stupidity of her smart-tongued familiar.

…

There was a thrill to the chase.

Ezio hated to admit it to himself, but it was true enough. Whenever he was fighting, there was a dark part of his mind that relished the sight of flowing blood, the rush of success when he managed to trick his foe with a particularly difficult manoeuvre, or the vicious satisfaction he felt when he left behind a strew of corpses, his enemies begging for mercy when they had been trying to kill him only moments before. Sometimes he granted it, sometimes he didn't.

Still, once the heady feeling had worn off, he always felt solemn and sometimes a little sick. The dying men often called for their mothers, their wives and their children with their last breaths, their twitching eyes begging for their fate not to be true.

Some of the people that Ezio had murdered in his life had given him no choice but to do so, swarming him in their attempts to end his life. Others had been vicious, cruel, and petty, and Ezio had no qualms to end theirs.

Still, it didn't change the fact that many of the men he killed had been fathers, brothers, and sons to grieving families and friends. Ezio had accepted the twinges of regret as the sacrifice he paid for his choice to live as an Assassin.

Death was part of his creed. Whether it was his own, or that of others, didn't particularly matter.

Chasing after a pickpocket that had stolen his young friend's money gave him a very similar rush, though, with none of the regrets and doubts. Ezio grinned as he raced through the crowded street, scattering a group of well-dressed merchants out of his way. He had never felt guilt at teaching an uppity thief a lesson.

"Ladro, ladro!" he bellowed at the top of his voice. "Thief!"

When the citizens heard the call, they scattered out of the way. A few burly workers didn't, however, spreading out and barring a narrow stretch of the street menacingly, cracking their knuckles. The thief stopped dead in his tracks, looking around wildly.

"My friend's money, per favore," Ezio called out cheerfully, slowing down as he approached.

When the thief heard him, he bolted sideways, scrambling up the façade of a storefront and lifting himself up a windowsill. Ezio blinked and swore, running after him as the man climbed up the building like an agile monkey.

'I really should have expected that,' he thought ruefully.

Soon, he hauled himself onto the roof with a pull of the hookblade, and he saw the thief cross the gable as fast as his feet could carry him. Ezio was after him in a flash before he lost him from view.

In the race across the roofs of Tristain, Ezio realized another thing: he was fast. When he had climbed the monuments of Constantinople, he had often grown out of breath, his stamina far more easily spent than in his youth. Genuine fear and terror for his own life and for Sofia had given him the strength necessary to pull through, and experience had always trumped youth in his fights, but soon after his return to Italy and his marriage, every moderately strenuous movement became torture, his lungs flailed and his heart fluttered. Marcello and Flavia had quickly learned to be gentle when they played with their father.

But now, all his troubles were simply gone. His heart beat like a jackhammer, his muscles were fluid and strong, his natural grace was restored and his lungs greedily took in clean air like they never had before. Faster, stronger, better.

He let out a giddy laugh as he sailed over a narrow street after the thief, not even breaking stride as he landed. There was never a day when he didn't thank whatever strange power had restored his youth to him. He would have died soon after arriving in Halkeginia otherwise, he was sure of it.

The thief threw a look over his shoulder, and blanched even more when he saw the cloaked Assassin close on his heels. He turned on his heel and abruptly changed direction, leaping onto a lower roof, perhaps hoping to lose his pursuer in the winding alleys he knew far more intimately than him.

Ezio saw him jump and leapt like an eagle, arms wide.

He crashed into the thief mid-flight, tackling him onto the roof. The man's breath was driven from his lungs, the impact on the hard shingles undoubtedly painful.

Ezio wasted no time, grabbing him by the collar of his dirtied cloth shirt and dragging him to the edge of the roof. He easily dangled him over empty air with one hand. He was now the only thing between the man and a nasty fall down six floors.

"Buongiorno, mio amico!" he said cheerfully, shaking him back to full consciousness. "You have something belonging to a friend of mine, I believe!"

"Mercy!" the man begged, eyes full of naked terror as he tried to grab onto the roof's edge with his toes. "Mercy, monseigneur!"

Ezio shook him again, and the man squealed in fear. "Give me my friend's money, and we shall be even."

The thief reached with shaking hands into a dirty pocket, throwing Louise's money pouch at him. "Here! Have it back! Please don't hurt me, milord!"

"One thing at a time," Ezio said, tightening his grip on the man's collar before it could slip. "I have a few questions to ask you first."

"Monseigneur, I'm just a simple thief!" the man whined.

"And I am that you know more about this city than any noble ever will. Tell me, do you scum have a guild in this city?"

"…What do you mean?"

Ezio loosened his grip just the slightest, and the man dropped an inch. He screamed, grabbing at Ezio's arm in a blind panic.

"You know exactly what I mean, canaglie!" he roared. "Do you thieves have a guild, a leader, a council!? Answer me!"

"Roberto!" the thief wailed, shaking like a leaf. "Roberto is our leader, milord! Mercy, I beg of you!"

Ezio drew him close, glaring. "Where can I find him?"

"At the Charming Fairies' Inn! You can find him there!" The man was weeping in terror, having long ago soiled himself. "Milord, I'm just a thief," he begged piteously. "The lord back home took my plot of land long ago, and I took to thievery out of hunger! Mercy, I beg you!"

Ezio shrugged, a cold smile on his face. "There are better ways to live your life than stealing from naive young women." He let go, giving him a light push. "Arrivederci."

The man dropped to the street with a hideous scream.

Instead of breaking his neck and spine on the cobblestones, however, he crashed into the cart of hay that had just passed in the street below. He looked up at the Assassin far above him, stunned.

Ezio gave him a smirk and a cheeky wave, disappearing over the roofs of the city.

…

Louise was getting more and more annoyed by the minute.

Considering that her base emotional level was one of mild irritation with the world, expressed through explosions of varying sizes, this meant that she was getting increasingly frazzled every time she was jostled around by passing crowds thronging the narrow streets of the capital. Or when she nearly got trodden to bloody paste by couriers cavalcading by on horseback. Or when passing carts and noble's carriages kicked up dust and dirt that covered her from head to toe and destroyed any sense of dignity she may have had left after travelling and living on the road for three days.

What annoyed her more at the moment, though, was the fact that she seemed to be going in circles, seeing as she hadn't managed to find that strange forge Ezio had been looking for.

"Rue Saint-Benoît, Rue Saint-Benoît…" Louise muttered under her breath, scowling. "This information would be so much more helpful if it wasn't one little street and alley out of hundreds in the city! Honestly! How do people get around all day not knowing where they are—"

She looked up at the heavens in supplication, spotting a large shop sign with a hammer striking an anvil above her.

The young noble blinked. "Oh," she muttered. "That helps, I suppose."

She patted herself down, ridding herself of most of the dust on her uniform – no common smith was going to see a scion of the Vallière family in indignity, certainly not! – before lifting up her chin and throwing open the door to the shop, head held high.

It was dark inside; that was the first thing she noticed. Entering from the brightly lit outside street, the dim interior might as well have been pitch black to her. As Louise's eyes adjusted, she started to make out a few details. The shop had a high ceiling and was long and narrow, plunging into the building.

That wasn't the thing that caught Louise's immediate attention, though. Its walls were clogged from front to end with racks filled with a variety of nasty-looking weapons that glimmered in the darkness: blades of all makes, shapes and sizes; warhammers and maces that made her positively ill as she imagined their vicious spikes breaking open a living man's skull; and rows of spearheads, javelin tips, and sharpened pike blades yet unfastened to their poles, but nonetheless looked sharp and pointy enough to pierce and tear flesh.

The shop was also, once she had managed to tear away her eyes from the many weapons to peer deeper into the shop, yawningly empty.

"H… Hello?" she called out, her voice quavering uncertainly. "Is anyone there?"

She heard a whooshing sound, and a fountain of sparks flew high into the air, the sudden, incandescent light stinging her eyes and making her flinch. In the sudden brightness, she saw the silhouette of a large man wearing a thick leather apron and even thicker leather gloves, a hammer held in one hand as he stood at the forge located at the very back of the shop, behind a counter. The smith held up the length of metal gripped in his other hand, his face twisted in a rictus of concentration as he inspected its colour. He never seemed to notice her.

The long metal piece, still glowing red-hot from where it had been heated in the coals of the forge, was swiftly placed upon the large anvil placed before it. The hammer came down, and the noise of metal striking metal was harsh, loud, echoing in the narrow confines of the forge, and it very nearly burst Louise's ear drums.

She clapped her hands over her ears, grimacing as the hammer came down again and again with a deafening clang. She tried shouting over the noise, but it didn't help at all. It was doubtful the smith had even noticed her in the darkness of his shop, really.

The student thought about simply hexing an explosion at or near him to get his attention, but decided against it. One, because it would have been terribly rude, and two, because she wanted to buy the man's wares. He'd be unwilling to do that if she scared him into dropping a piece of red-hot metal on his foot.

So she instead simply marched up to the counter, shouting as loudly as she could over the sounds of the hammer striking metal. "Excuse me! EXCUSE! ME! I was looking for a smith called Thélo—"

"Shut the fock up, lass!" the man bellowed back, making her jump. He stuck the metal back into the coals of the forge, furiously pumping the bellows. "Can't ye see tha' I'm workin' on a new sort'a steel?! Wait yer turn like everyone else!"

Louise's birdlike chest swelled indignantly. "Well, I never—"

The man turned to look at her, and the look in his eyes made her quail, magic or no. "Shut it, I said, or get lost! It's all the same ter me!"

She stepped back, saying nothing and just glaring at him. The smith ignored her entirely, energetically pumping the bellows for a few more minutes, the only sounds being the regular rush of air, the crackle of the coals, and the hiss of the bellows.

When he pulled the steel out of the coals again (Louise felt a hot wind rush past her and she had to step back – so scorching was the forge's heat), the metal glowing even redder than before, the smith eagerly inspected it, peering at it with one wrinkled eye.

He snorted in disgust a moment later, plunging the length of metal into a trough of water. "Another failure," he muttered to himself, raising the hissing length of metal over his shoulder and flinging it onto a pile of similarly deformed scraps, the roughly forged piece of metal impacting with a series of rattling clangs. The smith frowned at thin air. "That ore dinnae work either, did it? Shame… I thought I nailed it this time, I really did…"

"Excuse me," Louise interrupted him icily. "But I think you've ignored me for long enough."

The smith stopped scratching the bald crown of his head, peering down at her. He snorted, taking off his gloves. "Perhaps I have nae ignored ye long enough yet, lass. Ye look as if people pay far too much attention to you already, in any case."

He stepped up to the counter of his shop, slamming a hand down on its top. The lights sprang on, flickering lights caught behind glass cages giving the entire room a dim, gloomy gleam, with shadows dancing on the walls.

The smith had appeared… differently when he had hammered on the piece of metal at his forge. He had seemed like a god at the edge of light and darkness, shaping the way of the earth with nothing more than his own hands and broad shoulders.

He looked a lot smaller now, though he was by no means short. Louise barely reached his chest, and he was at least four or five times as wide as she was, all thick and broad-shouldered, his muscles rippling underneath his forger's wear. His bicep was as least as thick as her head.

The smith had dark hair and eyes, the former looking as if it had decided to wander from his crown to his jaw, leaving him with a bald head gleaming with the heat of the forge and a finely braided black beard hanging all the way to his belt buckle. It was safely tucked inside his forger's apron, and as the smith freed it with a muttered curse, Louise spotted all kinds of ornaments plaited into it – finely decorated pieces of metal that glinted with many colours in the faint light, small carved pieces of wood depicting beasts of prey, and other things she wasn't able to recognize.

He crossed his thick arms as he considered her, his feet planted firmly onto the stone floor of his forge. His dense, dark eyebrows were furrowed over his small, narrowed eyes as he shamelessly looked her up and down. He didn't appear particularly impressed.

"…So, what can ol' Théoleyre do fer ye, lass?"

Louise stood up, glaring at him imperiously. "I have a friend who is looking to have some pieces of armour repaired."

The smith's eyebrows climbed up. "Armour? I'm a weaponsmith, lass, not an armourer. If ye want a sword, a mace, a pike, I can make all o' those for ye. Armour, though? Tha's none o' my business."

"We were recommended to you by an acquaintance," Louise said, looking up at the smith with distaste. "From what I've seen and heard of you so far, I cannot possibly understand why."

The smith barked out a sharp laugh. "Hah! People talk all the time, missy. Blabberin', gossipin', hagglin'… Everyone got summat ter say or summat ter sell, and they all lie through their teeth with a smile ter do it. Why would ye ever believe anything anyone tries to tell ye?"

"Because I'm trying not to waste my money on fools!" Louise snapped back. "What kind of tradesman are you, anyway!?"

"One who doesn't give a shite about whatever anyone thinks," the smith said, glowering at her, his eyes glinting like a dark beetle's shell in the eerie light. "I make weapons, and I make 'em well. Tha's all I need ter know."

"Well said," a voice called out as the door slammed shut. Louise turned around to see Ezio walk towards them, looking at the two of them with amusement. "Well said indeed, signore."

"And who the hell are you?" Théoleyre asked gruffly, taking Ezio's measure and scowling.

Ezio put on his most charming smile, something that Louise had only seen him do when he was talking to that maid. "Someone who wishes to do business with you."

"Bloody nancyboy," the smith snorted disdainfully. He uncrossed his arms, flexing his fingers. "Whaddaya want, then? I don't have a lot of time for ye lot."

"I am looking for a sword."

Louise frowned. "What? Ezio, weren't we here for—"

The Assassin held up a hand, not taking his eyes off the smith and still smiling pleasantly. "Later, Louise. Now, as I said, I am looking for a sword. Per favore."

The smith rolled his eyes, walking around the counter to approach one of the walls hung with weapons. "I'll give ye a sword, sure," he muttered quietly under his breath, but Louise heard him anyway. "If ye even know ter use it, that is… Aha!"

He unhooked a long, golden blade with an elaborately decorated guard from the wall. As he carefully lifted it up, Louise could see the silvery inlay in the blade forming lines of flames running along the blade in exquisite detail. She held her breath. It looked beautiful.

Théoleyre turned around, proffering it to the Florentine with a smug grin and a mocking bow. "That blade fine enough for ye, milord?"

Ezio gripped its hilt and examined it for a brief moment, giving the weapon a few experimental one-handed swings. He grimaced. "Pezzo di merda."

Théoleyre's face fell, changing from from smug satisfaction to stunned disbelief. "…What?"

"This weapon," Ezio pronounced with disgust as he held the blade up to his eyes, "is a piece of shit. Pezzo di merda. That's what we call workmanship like this in my home, signore."

The smith cracked his knuckles, glaring at the thinner Florentine murderously. Louise hurriedly stepped out of the way. "You'd better 'ave a really good excuse for you talkin' like tha' to me, laddie," Théoleyre said slowly, his brogue growing thicker. "Men 'ave died before for less, you know."

"Then they died because they tried to fight with one of your swords," Ezio said flippantly, swinging the sword again. "This blade was not forged; it was moulded, no? It is nothing more than a slab of metal attached to a grip. This weapon has no balance at all, it's too heavy, and it's nearly impossible to swing without falling over. How am I supposed to use this in battle, per favore? The edge may be sharpened, yes, but just enough to make it appear as if it could cut through something thicker a sheet of parchment. And do you see this?"

Ezio put the weapon over his knee, pushing down harshly on both ends. There was a metal shriek, and Louise watched in horror as cracks spread all over the length of the gilded blade.

"…No ability to bend at all," Ezio pronounced after a moment. "This weapon would have shattered after a few parries."

With a simple twist of his wrist, Ezio threw the weapon in the air and caught it just as easily as it came down, holding out the weapon pommel-first to its maker with a thin smile. "It looks beautiful, certo. But that makes it nothing more than a perfumed piece of shit. Would you not agree, signore?"

The smith stepped closer and stared Ezio right in the eye, flexing his thick fingers meaningfully. Ezio just stared back, still smiling pleasantly, though his grip on the sword tensed.

'That's it, then,' Louise thought glumly as she tried to edge away. 'Death by annoyed commoner. Never really thought that would happen to me, to be honest.'

And then another voice burst out into cackling laughter. "HAHAHAHAHA! Oh, Founder preserve me, I never thought I'd see the day that someone had the cart-sized balls to say that to your face, old man! Oh, Lordy!"

"Shut up, will ye?!" the smith bellowed, looking towards the wall of weapons with an angry glare. "Who asked yer damn opinion anyway, ye ol' piece o' junk!?"

"Piece of junk?" the voice retorted, sounding outraged. "How dare you call me that, you half-arsed Northern anvil-banger! I'm the great Derflinger, that's who I am!"

"Nothin' great about you 'cept your ego," Théoleyre snapped back, scowling. "I thought we agreed on you shuttin' that trap of yers when I 'ave customers in the shop, didn't we?"

"That was before I saw my new best friend over there take apart that showpiece of yours," the sword said gleefully, quivering on its hooks in something like mirth. "Oh, you should'a seen your face, old man! Priceless!"

"Excuse me, signori," Ezio interrupted mildly. "But… is that sword talking?"

The sword's sheath rattled. "Course I'm talking! Ain't it obvious, pal?"

"Ah. I see." The Florentine scrunched up his face and shrugged. "Bene, all things considered, this is probably one of the least confusing things I have seen so far in this country…"

"Swords aren't supposed to talk," Louise muttered under her breath, kneading the bridge of her nose. She was also pretty sure that her blood pressure was going through the roof, but somehow, she couldn't bring herself to care. "Seriously, Ezio. I have known you for a few weeks now. First, you turn up out of the blue as a human familiar, which is supposed to be impossible. Then you start flying without magic. Then Fouquet attacks, and you manage to track her down and kill her, even though you're a commoner."

She looked up, glowering at him from under her brow. "And now, you walk into the one shop in this gigantic city that has a sentient, talking sword in it. Something that isn't supposed to be possible, either."

Ezio shot her an amused glance. "…Would you believe me if I told that it still was not the strangest month I ever had?"

"I'm not surprised," she groaned, throwing up her arms. "I'm just wondering when this madness will end, and how."

"Sounds like you had a pretty interesting life, buddy," the sword said cheerfully. "Care to share some of your stories? I got a few good ones, myself!"

"Maybe later," Ezio told the weapon politely. "I only came here to have my armour repaired, and then we have other errands to run."

"Shucks," the sword muttered with a quiver of its quillon, sounding disappointed. "But you'll be coming back, won'tcha?"

"That depends entirely on whether Messer Théoleyre is as skilled a craftsman as Agnès claimed him to be." Ezio shot the brittle weapon in his hand a significant glance. "Right now, I am not convinced."

"Agnès?" the smith asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Ye're not talkin' 'bout Agnès de Rouvroy, by any chance? The chevalier leading the Musketeers up at the Royal Palace?"

"That's her," Louise said, frowning. "You know her?"

A booming laugh escaped Théoleyre's mouth. "Know her? Hell, I'm the one who made the swords for her lads and lasses! She's always been a good customer to me!"

"But this sword—"

"This sword," Théoleyre interrupted, snatching the gilded weapon out of Ezio's hands, "is summat I keep around ter screw over those idiots stupid enough ter go straight for the first shiny bit o' steel they see." The smith casually tossed the blade over his shoulder, where it landed with a loud crash on the scrap metal pile.

"Piece o' shit that impresses arseholes that know nothin' 'bout fighting. And if they get themselves killed using it…" His beard twisted in what might have been a savage grin. "Well, usually, they're not around to complain anymore. Good riddance, if ye ask me."

"…You must not have many customers," Ezio said with what Louise thought was probably all the tact he could muster.

"Bah!" Théoleyre scoffed, waving him off. "The customers that know their blades, those I like. At least they appreciate my craft!"

"Davvero?" Ezio asked politely. "So far, I find that hard to believe."

"This is what happens if you keep being an asshole, old man!" the sword called out merrily from the side. "Told you it would happen sooner or later!"

"Shut it, Derflinger! Ye're ruining my reputation here!"

"The only reputation you have is that of a curmudgeon, you old Germanian jerk-off! Not much to ruin there, if you ask m—Hey, hey, hey, no you don't—"

Théoleyre had marched over, slammed the sword home in its sheath and silencing its voice. He turned around, an expression of relief on his bearded face. "Sorry 'bout that, that thing almost never shuts its trap…" He crossed his arms again, considering master and familiar with a speculative eye. "Well, if Agnès sent ye here, then that must mean she thinks you're worth something. So, what do ye need? I've got daggers, swords, maces, some two-handed weapons if you think bigger is better in b—"

"Armour, per favore," Ezio interrupted politely but firmly, loosening the clasps on one of his cracked shin bracers and holding it out to the smith. "Just a few repairs. That's all I want."

"Really?" the smith said, sounding disappointed. "Why would ye come to me for armour? I'm a weaponsmith, boy, not an armourer."

Louise frowned. "There's a difference?"

Théoleyre rolled his eyes. "As big a difference as between night and day, lass. Can't ask someone tha' only knows how to shape steel into blades to suddenly make a breastplate, can ye? Different process entirely. Needs different skills, too."

"Just take a look, please," Ezio insisted, still holding out the piece of black armour.

"Fine," the smith muttered as he accepted it, scowling. "But dinnae be surprised if I…" He quieted as he ran his palm over the gold-tinted piece shin bracer, his eyes focussing sharply as he examined it intently, turning the shin guard over and over in his hands.

Louise sidled over to Ezio. "Think he's finally gone crazy enough for us to leave?" she whispered, annoyed. "Or did you expect something else to happen?"

Ezio shrugged. "I just heard a talking sword. How am I supposed to know what I should expect, piccina?"

"Where did ye find this armour?" Théoleyre said sharply, his eyes narrowing.

"It was my ancestor's. Why do you ask?"

"This isn't just ordinary steel," the smith said half to himself and half to his audience, holding up the piece of armour to the eerie light of his workshop. "It looks like it, sure, but there's something about it… It's lighter than steel, but firmer and more flexible at the same time… I'd say it was Elvish make, but that can't be true…"

"This was made by men," Ezio interrupted calmly. "Not elves."

"That so? Good!" A grin broke out on the smith's face. "That means I can recreate it!" He turned on the ball of his heel. "Gaston!" he roared into the back of his shop, making Louise jump. "Get your sorry arse over here, will ye?!"

There was a dull crash of metal from somewhere beyond the forge and a door slammed open moments later, revealing a wiry, harried-looking youth wearing leather gloves and a thick metal-plated apron. "You called, master?"

"Oi, kiddo, are ye still trying to make that weird armour of yers when I'm not looking?"

The youth flushed even darker than the heat of the forge would have suggested, shuffling his feet. "Er, well, I hoped you wouldn't notice—"

"Good! Ye've got a new job!" Théoleyre threw the piece of armour at his apprentice, who fumbled to catch it. "Ye've always been good at squirrelling out what sort of metals are in a blade, haven't ye? Think ye can do the same here?"

The youth ran his hands over the metal, his eyes scrunched close and his head tilted, as if listening to something only he could hear. He opened his eyes again, his expression clear. "I think I can, master," he said slowly. "It'll take time, though."

"Right on. Hop to it, will ye?"

"Yes, master! Right away!" He turned towards them, sketching a sloppy bow towards Ezio and Louise and grinning awkwardly at her. "Milord, milady…"

"He's a good lad," Théoleyre said as Gaston disappeared through the doorway into the back of the shop. "Bit clumsy, but his skill makes up for it."

"Why do you think he can fix my armour when you cannot?" Ezio asked sceptically.

"He's the bastard son of an Earth mage, that's why."

Louise blinked. "What?"

Théoleyre sighed, running a hand over his bald crown. "Poor sod came to me, all thin and starving, begging me to take him in. Said his mother had died, and there was no father. I'm not one for charity, but he could tell the make of a blade just by touching it. Useful."

"That doesn't mean he's a noble's bastard!" Louise argued heatedly.

"Hah! What kind of rock have you lived under, lass? There's thousands of children like 'im in this city alone. None of them ever learned to control their powers. They get… a bit wonky. Develop strange skills. Like Gaston did." The smith shrugged his broad shoulders. "Now he's my apprentice. He'll make a fine smith in the future, Founder willing."

Ezio scratched his chin thoughtfully. "And you think he can repair my armour?"

"He'll certainly try, and he 'as the skills. Armour was never my thing, but I'll help him once he's figgered out how that armour was forged." A smug grin flashed across the smith's features. "Unless, of course, ye know any other smith recommended by Agnès in this city."

"Touché," Ezio conceded with a grumble, beginning to unclasp the pieces of armour on his person. "How long?"

"Come back in a few days," Théoleyre said, scooping up the pieces of armour and carefully laying them out on the countertop. "Should be enough time for the lad to sort it out."

"Suona bene."

"Ye need anything else?"

Louise wanted to do nothing more than leave this broody cave masquerading as a shop, but she saw Ezio's eyes flickering at her in a speculative manner. "The little one needs a sword."

"Ezio!" she hissed. "Can't we just go already?!"

"If you think that we are going to just visit signore Roberto and his friends for a nice little chat and biscuits, then you are being naïve, piccina," he said mildly. "You need a weapon to defend yourself if things go awry."

"I'm a mage," she said scornfully. "I don't need a sword if I've got my wand."

"Then why did you ask me to teach you swordplay?"

She fell silent, crossing her arms and huffily looking away. "…I am not little."

The smith snorted with poorly disguised laughter. "A sword for the not-so-little lass, comin' right up." He turned towards the racks of weapons hung on the wall, eyeing them thoughtfully. "Lessee what we got 'ere…"

Louise soon found all sorts of instruments of death shoved into her hands: thin rapiers whose points dragged on the ground when she sheathed them, viciously curved falchions that felt far too heavy in her hands, and spiked maces and hammers that she had no idea how to wield properly. Others were better, but the balance felt off – she had a feeling that few people with her small size and strength ever wielded anything bigger than a large knife or dagger, and it was reflected in the store's stock.

"That is not the right weapon for you, piccina," Ezio said with a chuckle as she tried to lift a two-handed sword.

"I know," she snapped angrily, blowing a strand of hair of her eyes and glaring. "Why don't you let me try something shorter?"

The sword rattled on its hooks in laughter. "Well, well, well! Apparently, some ladies these days like them short! Who knew?"

"Stow it already, Derflinger," Théoleyre retorted, not even deigning to turn around. "Unless ye have any suggestions, I suggest you stay out of this."

"Something one-handed, no more than three feet in length, simple crossguard, not too heavy, balanced blade for both slashing and thrusting," Derflinger said promptly. Silence fell as the three others stared at the blade. "What? You told me to shut up unless I had any suggestions. Can't shut me up now, can you?"

Ezio chose to ignore that last question. "…Do you have any weapon like the one the sword suggested?"

"The name's Derflinger, by the way. No need to thank me."

"Let me just take a look," Théoleyre muttered. "I'm sure I have some arming swords in that corner—"

"No need to look any further, old man," Derflinger interrupted cheerfully. "The fella already has the perfect sword for her on his belt!"

Louise went beet red at the insinuation, but before she could explode in a tirade against the sword, she saw Ezio drawing his eagle-beaked sword, eyeing it solemnly for a moment. He then held it out to her, grip first. "Try it."

She stared at him, knowing how important that sword was to him and opening her mouth to protest, but he insisted with a nod, looking back into her eyes with complete seriousness. She just closed her mouth and reached for the silvery sword.

The moment she felt the dark leather wrapped firmly around the grip, she knew that this sword was absolutely perfect for her. It was lighter than any of the smith's blades, but with enough weight so that its blows would be felt, and perfectly balanced. The blade was long enough to extend her reach, but not long enough to be unwieldy.

As she swung it, it didn't exactly sing like the beautiful magical swords of the storybooks she had read as a child, but the menacing hiss as it cut through the air was still music to her ears.

She heard a clattering chuckle. "Well, looks like the little lady found her blade!"

Louise blinked, finding her way back to reality, and found herself in one of the guard positions Ezio had taught her only two weeks ago. The Florentine and the smith just watched her with faint amusement.

She quickly dropped the weapon to her side, clearing her throat.

"…It's a good sword," she said defensively when they kept grinning.

Ezio laughed quietly. "That is it is," he agreed, stepping forward and taking the hand gripping the sword in his own, falling to one knee. He held on long after he was done correcting her grip with a few quick nudges.

"…Ezio?"

He looked up abruptly, smiling weakly at her. "This sword, piccina," he said quietly, "belonged to my ancestor over three hundred years ago. It has accompanied me on my travels across many countries and continents, and it has always faithfully protected me from my foes." He chuckled. "It also was quite useful in impressing pretty ladies."

She raised a sceptical eyebrow at him. "As if you ever needed a sword to do that."

"Oh, believe me, the ladies like swords." He waggled his eyebrows at her. "It does not matter how long it is, admittedly, but rather how well you use it—"

She hit him with the flat of the blade, smiling. "Prat."

He tried to look wounded. "Who, me? Never. In ogni caso," he continued, his smile flickering out, "like I said, this sword is important to me." He raised her hand with the sword still in its grip. "What do you see, piccina?"

She examined the beautifully decorated crossguard and pommel closely, running her fingers over the finely crafted metal. "An eagle's head," she finally said. "And its wings."

"My ancestor was called Altair Ibn-la'Ahad," Ezio said, the foreign tongue flowing eerily like a song. He smiled as he anticipated her question. "Yes, Louise, it means 'Flying Eagle', just like my own name. This blade was made for him alone. For many years, it was thought lost, plundered by a horde of barbarians and carried off to foreign lands like common loot."

"So why do you have it?" she asked quickly, trying to hide her burgeoning curiosity. Ezio had mentioned he had a wife and children, but rarely spoke of them, and had spoken even less of his past before them.

He shrugged. "I came across it by accident, and took it back. It has rarely left my side since." He smirked. "And when my enemies tried to relieve me of it, they always paid dearly in blood."

"…So why give it to me?"

Ezio shrugged, smiling helplessly. "You need a good sword to defend yourself with. I know none superior to this one." He ran a hand along the smooth silver metal with a certain fondness. "Take good care of it, d'accordo? I might want to see it returned someday."

She remembered his condition asking her to send his possessions home should he die, and she nodded, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat. "I promise."

He held her hand for a moment more and looked her in the eyes, smiling.

"Aw, and now she's blushing!" the talking sword cooed, making Louise jump when she remembered that they weren't quite alone. "How cute! Can we keep her, old man? Say we can, come on!"

"She doesn't belong to us, Derf," Théoleyre rumbled, the smith's beard twitching. "And what would an ol' piece o' scrap metal like you want with a lass like that, in any case?"

"Hey, that old piece of scrap metal knew what was best for your client better than you did, old man!" Derflinger reminded him cheerfully. "Strike… four-hundred-and-twenty-two to nil, I think. So you can just go and suck on my p—"

"Derf!"

"—ommel, I was about to say pommel! Hell, what did you think I was going to say?"

Théoleyre started rubbing his thick nose angrily, growling under his breath. "Derf, I swear that I'm going to sell ye to the next bastard who's willing to take ye off my hands!"

"How much for the talking sword?"

The smith's face snapped up and he stared at Ezio as the Assassin got to his feet. "…Wha'?"

"How much for the talking sword?" Ezio repeated with an amused smirk. "Now that I've given mine to the little mistress, I need a weapon of my own, no?"

"And you're choosin' tha' sword out of all the others in my shop?" Théoleyre asked incredulously, jutting out a thumb at the chatty blade.

"Hey! That just shows he's got taste!"

"Shut up, Derf," the smith snapped. He peered suspiciously at the Florentine. "Why do ye want that sword, milord? And answer truthfully. I cannae abide liars and oathbreakers."

Louise wanted to snap at the smith to tell him that he had no business questioning a noble's familiar, but before she could, Ezio had marched over to the wall and deftly drawn the talking sword from its sheath, swinging it with practiced ease in one hand. Derflinger remained silent.

"…Double-edged, well-made fuller," he pronounced after a moment of examining the blade. He weighed the weapon in his hand. "Longer than an arming sword, but shorter than a two-handed spadone."

The Assassin gripped the hilt with both hands and brought the point to bear with a single explosive thrust, then bringing it down in a sharp slash with a single twist of the wrists. "…Balanced weight for cut and thrust, good edge, armour-piercing point, and," he continued, experimentally juggling the weapon from one hand to another with ease, "it's light enough that I can use it either one-handed or two-handed."

"…Heh," Derflinger spoke up, the rattling voice sounding genuinely impressed. "You sure know your swords, pal, you truly do."

Ezio smirked. "I have had much opportunity to improve." He grabbed the blade by the ricasso over the crossguard, turning it around so that he could examine the surprisingly plain hilt. "You are well made, signore Derflinger," he noted idly. "I am certain your creator was proud of you."

The crossguard hummed in a rueful chortle. "If I could remember who my creator was, perhaps then I'd know. But it's been so long… There's something familiar about you, pal."

"Is there?"

"Something I can't quite place…" The sword chuckled again. "Been a while since I met anyone that I could truly call partner. You up for it, pretty boy?"

"I have never owned a talking sword before," Ezio said with a grin. "C'è una prima volta per tutto, no?"

"No idea what the hell you just said, but I agree."

"Just wait for 'alf a damn moment!" Théoleyre interrupted, glaring. "That sword still belongs to me!"

"True enough," Ezio agreed, facing the smith without flinching. "And to answer your question, Messere: I would like to buy this sword because it is exactly what I need, and it fits me perfectly. There is no better sword than this one in your shop."

For a while, he and the smith were locked in a duel of wills, neither one willing to give way first.

Théoleyre harrumphed, uncrossing his arms and scratching his beard as he glanced away. "You know your swords, das stimmt," he grudgingly acknowledged. "A good eye for fine blades. A shame ye're not going to buy one of me creations, really… You would have been worthy to use them."

"How much for the talking sword?" Ezio repeated for the third time.

The smith laughed out loud. "A hundred écu d'or."

Louise goggled. That price was ridiculously low for the alleged best weapon this shop had to offer. Good swords made by a master smith could cost well a hundred times as much.

"That is rather cheap…" Ezio said warily.

"I bought that sword for that same sum 'bout thirty years ago from a caravan trader travellin' up from Romalia," Théoleyre said with a grin. "Usually, those bastards try ter haggle the pants off of ye, but this one took my first offer right away, not askin' any questions." He shot the sword a dour look. "Found out too late why. Damn thing wouldn't shut up, day or night!"

"I regret nothing," Derflinger declared.

"Neither do I, ye old chatterbox," Théoleyre grumbled. "Ye were a good friend ter have. Still, I've got to get my money back somehow, don'tcha agree?"

Ezio laughed out loud, reaching into his moneypurse and starting to count out a hundred golden coins onto the countertop. "Agreed, Messere Théoleyre. I would loathe leaving you destitute."

"Ah, bugger off," the smith grumbled as he returned behind his counter. "As if I needed nancyboy foreigners like you to support meself and me work. Cocksure youngsters, the lot of ye."

Louise smothered a laugh, turning away and feigning interest in the pikes hanging on the wall.

"Novantasette… Novantotto… Novantanove… e cento scudi, bene!" Ezio declared happily. He shook Théoleyre's offered hand, twitching a bit from the smith's crushing grip. "Mille grazie, signore. It was a pleasure doing business with you."

"Just take tha' old piece o' scrap metal outta my sight," the smith said gruffly, shooing them away. "I got work ter do."

"Of course," Ezio said, bowing graciously. "We shall leave you to your endeavours, then. Un piacere, davvero."

Louise just nodded her goodbye, joining Ezio as he walked towards the door, purchase in hand.

"Oi, lass! Heads up!"

She whirled around only to see steel flash in the eerie light of the shop. Ezio snatched the foot-long dagger sailing out of the air before it could impale her, and Théoleyre roared with laughter. "On the house!" he called out, and before Louise could even think of drawing her wand, he had disappeared into the back of his shop, the lights winking out.

"How dare he!" she hissed when Ezio unceremoniously pushed her out the front door. "He nearly killed me!"

Ezio shook his head, examining the dagger in his hand. "Don't speak nonsense, piccina," he rebuked her. "He expected me to catch it."

Derflinger laughed. "That's the old man, true enough. Always was a bit touched in the head, that one."

"Well, now I can understand why he doesn't have many customers!" Louise declared, fuming. She glanced at her familiar— friend, she reminded herself, he's my friend— wondering what was going through his mind. "…What now, though? Are we going to look for Roberto?"

"There's no need," Ezio said, flipping the dagger in his palm and holding it out to her. "I already know where to find him."

"What?! How?"

He grinned at her. "Magic! What else?"

"Ezio…" she growled, raising the dagger she had just snatched from his hand. Derflinger chuckled loudly, only raising her ire.

Ezio just laughed, nimbly dodging out of knife range. "Remember that pickpocket that stole your purse? He was rather talkative once I dangled him off a roof."

"So?"

"Roberto is a thief," Ezio said, relishing Louise's frustration. He began walking down the street, his little mistress hastening to follow him. "And not just any thief, mind you – apparently, he is their leader. Very important."

"And why does that mean we can't look for him now?"

"Thieves are reclusive people – it comes with the profession, I suppose. They only come out of hiding in the evenings and at night."

"But it's barely midday!"

"Enough time to go shopping!" Ezio cheerfully agreed, sweeping out an arm towards an open tailor's storefront and grinning at her. "Care to join me, piccina?"

With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Louise followed him.

…

"I can't believe we just did that," Louise muttered under her breath.

Ezio had been humming an old tune he had heard in his youth, but now he turned to peer at the girl walking at his side. "Did what, per favore?"

Louise just shook her head, ignoring him in favour of marvelling at empty air. "Honestly, of all the people I expected to be as vain as a peacock, you were at the very bottom of my list."

"Vain?!" Ezio demanded incredulously. "Why would you ever say something like that?"

"We just spent two hours at that tailor's shop," Louise answered, shaking her head again in despair. "Two hours of nothing more than putting on clothes, trying out colours and dyes, and seeing which bit of clothing goes best with the other! I've had nightmares about getting dragged on trips like these with my sisters, you know!"

"And yet the result is so dashingly dapper and handsome, no?" Ezio said with a cheeky grin, throwing out his arms wide and turning to face her.

Louise looked him up and down, and she had to reluctantly agree that even though they had spent a lot of time at the tailor's, Ezio's presence had definitely changed. Gone was the ragged white cloak and hood thrown over his commoner's attire, replaced by elegantly tailored white robes that clung tightly to his body, the split layers of cloth running down all the way to his boots, allowing him free movement and comfort.

A white cloak with red lining fell comfortably from his shoulders and hung all the way down his back, flowing freely. When he walked slowly, it concealed the grisly array of weaponry Ezio carried on him at all times – his dagger, the varied sheathes of throwing knives, and the many pouches of knickknacks that she knew were far more dangerous than they looked – and the rough leather harness he had purchased to temporarily replace his ancestor's armour. The black handle and pommel of Derflinger poked from a sheath under his arm, in easy reach.

Louise glanced up only to see him study her with amusement out of the darkness of his hood, a design with a flap of cloth resembling an eagle's beak hanging over his face. Ezio had insisted as strongly on that detail when haggling with the tailor as he did on the open, red-lined collar, for some strange reason.

She scowled back, unwilling to voice out loud that instead of looking like a commoner putting on airs he didn't deserve, he could now easily be mistaken for someone of station and wealth. And, indeed, looked very striking.

"I guess you're… presentable now," she sniffed, turning away and continuing on down the street in the city's market district. "About time that happened, I'd say."

"Presentable, she says," Louise heard the annoyed Florentine mutter under his breath as he followed behind her. "About time it happened, she says… Dio mi aiuti, she's actually worse than Christina…"

Derflinger cackled loudly. "Hah! Oh, she's a little firebrand, that one! I haven't had this much fun with a bunch of humans in ages, partner!"

"Stai zitto! So," he addressed her loudly, and the grin in his voice was audible. "Do you like your new clothes too, piccina?"

And now there was another reason why the stay at the tailor's had been so galling to the youngest daughter of the Vallières. Once he had been fitted, Ezio, with his pouch still filled with the pickpocket's earnings, had insisted on buying her new clothes. Considering that her student uniform was never meant for rough travel on a horse for free days, she had reluctantly accepted.

What she hadn't expected was for Ezio to grin mischievously at her and ask the tailor what he thought would fit her. Once the man began pulling out various reams of cloth, she knew that her cheeky familiar had set her up. The eager-to-please merchant was soon loudly speculating as to what certain clothes would fit her figure and went on to suggest various styles and clothes, one more outrageous than the other. She was forced to try them all on, even as Ezio stood grinning in the corner and Derflinger made suggestive comments designed to embarrass her.

After half an hour of this charade, she finally put her foot down and chose a pair of sturdy riding trousers and a blouse in simple white, and a long mage's cloak of the same colour with a hood to conceal her long hair and figure. A belt and sheath for her new sword and dagger complemented the picture, as did the leather armour cut down so that it fit her small frame, and the heavy rider's boots fitting snugly on her feet were quite menacing enough to give any thug pause.

It galled her that Ezio had immediately approved of the ensemble, and even more that he had cheerfully paid the tailor before she could speak up about it. Louise hated feeling indebted to people. Her mother considered it weakness, and so did she.

Still, those new clothes…

"…They're nice," she conceded reluctantly, trying to get used to the unfamiliar trousers and pulling a face as she shifted awkwardly. "Still feels a bit weird, though."

"Now, now, piccina," Ezio said amiably. "Bear the indignity. Now you will be protected if someone tries to shove a blade into your chest, at the very least."

"No one will be able to peek up your skirt anymore, though," Derflinger mused aloud. "Shame, truth be told. Well, those new trousers do emphasize your lovely legs quite a bit—"

"Ezio," Louise bit out, "if you don't shut up that sword right now, I'll take it off you and throw it into the river."

"Hah, that's the worst you can think of, girl? I've spent decades stuck underwater before, and all I did was rust! Think of something more terrifying! Come on, bring it!"

"Play nice, children," Ezio chided them. "We have better things to do than squabbling."

"Such as?"

"Such as discovering the history of this city."

"Oh, you want to hear about the city's history?" Louise asked, and though she tried to hide it, her interest piqued.

She had always enjoyed reading history books, chronicles, and travellers' accounts of far-off lands – they were a distraction from her dreary life and constant failures, especially when she could imagine herself visiting these exotic foreign locales.

When she could imagine being anyone but herself, the Zero.

"Well," Louise began, trying to dredge up the details gleaned from books read long ago, "Brimir lead his followers out of the Homeland, beset by the elves, and once he was near death after driving them away, he decreed that his student sand sons should wander the world. Tristain and the capital were founded by the youngest of Brimir's sons, and—"

"Oh?" Ezio commented as they continued walking around the marketplace. "Do you really think that this is how it happened?"

She shot him an annoyed look. "Well, of course it is! How else could it have? Their power is based on their descent from Brimir! The royal line has been unbroken for centuries, after all. It's a sign of the Lord's favour."

"And no doubt there are many pieces of parchment and scrolls written by long dead men documenting just what everyone wants to hear today," Ezio muttered.

Louise stopped dead, planting her hands on her hips and glaring. "And what is that supposed to mean, Ezio?"

"It means, piccina," the Florentine said as he turned to face her, his expression even, "that history is often written by those who are left to write it."

She frowned. "Huh?"

"The ones who write the history books and chronicles," Ezio elaborated, "are those who vanquished their foes by force of arms, the ones who kept their records and destroyed those of their adversaries, and the ones that imposed their will on those they crushed."

"So? I don't understand what you're trying to tell me here, Ezio."

The Assassin's armoured hand scythed through the air in a dismissive gesture. "I am trying to tell you, piccina, that those histories and chronicles that you seem to adore so much were all written by men and women who had a stake in justifying their acts, their reigns, perhaps even their atrocities. Their accounts lack… clarity. Impartial judgement. Both little things and important details fall through the cracks, or they remain hidden behind long phrases and double meanings we cannot decipher. And when knowledge surfaces that contradicts what is previously known or believed… Well, sometimes it simply disappears."

"What, are you telling me that the history of my entire people might be nothing more than a pack of lies and half-truths?" She scoffed. "That's ridiculous."

Ezio studied her for a moment, his expression impassive. "…Do you know what I learned a long time ago, Louise?" He stepped closer, dropping his mouth to her ear and whispering. "Nothing is true."

She looked up at him quizzically, but he straightened his back and turned on his heel without another word. She started running after him. "Hey! Don't you want to hear the rest of the capital's story?"

"No need," Ezio said bluntly.

Louise suppressed the feeling of disappointment that welled up inside her. "Why not?"

Ezio stopped halfway along the side of the large open square in the market district, and he sat down on a bench set along the wall. He smiled at her, gesturing for her to join him. "All I need to know about the city, Louise, I can observe from here."

She shot him a sardonic look. "Oh, really? And how, pray?"

He smirked at her. "By listening."

She frowned, waiting for him to say more, but he simply leant forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands linked, falling silent as his hood fell over his eyes. She nudged him with her elbow, but Ezio didn't react at all as he seemed to observe the passersby.

After twenty minutes, she was fed up with his silence and ready to simply grab Ezio by the collar and shake him until he told her what he was playing at.

"What do you see, piccina?" he suddenly asked her before her temper lashed out.

She blinked, torn away from her annoyance. "A marketplace?"

Ezio smiled briefly. "True. And what can you tell me about this city by watching it?"

"As I said, it's a marketplace, Ezio," she said testily. "People sell wares and buy them. Business seems to be doing well, considering all the people coming and going. There's not much else to see here, is there?"

Her friend chuckled. "And that is where you would be wrong, piccina." He pointed with one hand at a stand in the distance. "Try to listen to them."

"How?! There's too much noise, and they're too far away!"

"Just strain your ears, piccina." He smirked at her. "You might just be surprised."

She rolled her eyes, but did as he told her, attempting to drown out the noise of the crowd of the noise around her and watching intently as she saw a well-dressed woman argue with the merchant.

"—this…misgui…empt… joke, then…should…not amus…"

"…lady…don't think…funny eith…"

And suddenly she could hear the two argue as if she was standing right next to them, shouting into her ear.

"—lly!? Six sous for a pound of carrots? Are you trying to swindle me?!"

The man shrugged his shoulders, not budging. "The tolls to enter the city have gone up, apparently, and the roads aren't as safe as they used to be. Orcs and bandits, 'pparently. Hence, price's gone up."

"This is an outrage! This is twice as much as last month. You can't just—"

"Lady, for every harridan that comes to me complainin', I get four other folks who buy my wares because they're hungry. Now, are you gonna keep whinin', or are you goin' to buy something? Because you're holdin' up the queue."

The woman grumbled under her breath and fumbled about in her purse, but Louise violently shook her head when the dull thrumming in her ears threatened to make them pop.

She rubbed her temples, glaring at Ezio. "What was that?!" she hissed angrily.

"So you do have the skill," he said quietly, more to himself than her. "Come è affascinante…"

"Ezio, do you mind—"

"Try to listen to those fellows, Louise," he interrupted her, pointing at a group of men. "Just do what you did before, va bene?"

She shot him a venomous look, but tried to concentrate on the gaggle of men on the other side of the marketplace, watching their arms flail about as they heatedly discussed something with one another. This time, it took far less time for their worried whispers to be heard over the noise of the marketplace.

"—you hear what I told you?! The Academy was attacked! In broad daylight and while the princess was visiting, no less!"

"And the Musketeers couldn't do anything? Bah, that little girl was a fool when she disbanded the noble guards, I tell you. Who the hell talked her into that, by the way?"

"Founder, if they nearly couldn't protect her… Who is going to protect the kingdom, then?"

A derisive snort came from one of the men. "It sure as hell isn't going to be her, mate. B'sides, it's not as if she has anything to say about ruling this damned country in the first place. It's all in that blasted cardinal's hands, clever foreign bastard that he is, and his noble pals."

"It can't be that bad—"

"Founder's Blood, are you really that stupid?!" the other hissed, throwing up his arms angrily. "World just ain't a safe place anymore! There's rebels in Albion tearing the country apart, our king's as dead as a doornail with the noble bastards fighting over the spoils, and our princess is a little girl that listens to the pope's bootlicker! How the hell can this possibly get any worse, huh?!"

"So what then? What do you plan on doing?"

The man deflated, shrugging tiredly. "Keep our heads down and hope our homes don't burn down when the nobles start setting the world on fire. What else can us common folks do, after all?"

There was grumbling and more harsh whispers, but the deep thrumming in Louise's ears forced her to tear her ears from the conversation. She shook her head once or twice, glancing at Ezio. The Assassin looked impassive, merely pointing to the façade of a shop on the far corner of the marketplace.

She followed his eyes, seeing a man with nails stuck in his mouth hammering a large board across his doorframe, a woman tightly holding a child's hand standing next to him.

Louise concentrated again, letting the noise wash over her like a wave of the sea, and then she could hear their voices, too.

"—we really have to go?" the child asked plaintively. "I liked it here! I'll miss my friends!"

"Sorry, son," the man mumbled, taking out another nail and adjusting the board. "There's just no business for a jeweller here anymore."

The woman shot him an angry look. "This is all your fault!" she hissed venomously. "I had to sell my family's dowry to cover your debts! And now I have to leave my home!? Mother was right about you, Founder bless her soul! You are a failure!"

The man's shoulders sagged, and he turned a miserable grimace towards her. "Honey, please—"

"Don't you dare 'honey' me! It is your fault! All because you were a failure as a businessman!"

"Dear, would you—"

"But nooo, you had to expand your business, you had to sell more gems. Founder, if I'd known how it would end up with you—"

"Dear, please shut up for just a damned minute, would you?!"

The woman's jaw snapped shut, staring at her husband in something akin to surprise, but her mouth soon became set in a thin line. The man lowered his eyes, shook his head, and sighed.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you," he said quietly. "But there's nothing here for us anymore. Trade has stopped; my clients have lost their money… No one wants to buy jewellery these days, they only care to pawn it."

Her eyes narrowed. "And?"

He set the hammer down and reached out, taking her free hand into both of his own. "Let's go someplace else," he said quietly. "Gallia. The country is rich, and the nobles at court will pay fortunes for their gleaming baubles."

Her expression became chagrined. "I don't know, Jacob… It's so far away, and the people will be strange and foreign, and—"

"Remember when we met?" the man said desperately, peering into her eyes. "When I was still travelling with that caravan? You begged me to take you away from your home, to take you around the world."

A faint, wistful smile crinkled her eyes. "I remember. Father absolutely hated you." The smile disappeared, aging her. "But that was a long time ago, Jacob."

"It's not too late," he said earnestly, raising her hands to gently kiss her fingers. "Let's go to Gallia. They say Lutèce's streets are paved with gold; we'll be sure to make our fortune there! And I'll finally be able to take you on that voyage I promised you."

The woman looked down when the little boy tugged on her hand. "Maman," he said quietly. "Don't fight. Don't you love each other?"

She startled, opened her mouth to speak, then snapped it shut again and smiled. "Yes," she murmured, nearly inaudible to Louise's ears. She picked up her child, kissing the top of its head fondly. "Yes, we do."

Her eyes darted to her husband, who smiled cautiously at her. "Let's go to Gallia, then," she said, smiling. "We might just find something new."

"Something better," he agreed, smiling back with relief. "I promise."

She just shook her head and laughed, and Louise snapped her eyes, tearing herself away from the happy family. Her head snapped to Ezio, who was studying the comings and goings around him with a blank look on his face.

Anger bubbled up at him inside of her. He was always like this. He would tell her to do something without telling her why, and she was growing sick of it. It was patronizing.

"Ezio," she hissed at him, "what's the point of doing this?!"

"Look around you, piccina," he said quietly. "When you told me of this city's history, you said it was rich. That it was prosperous. That its people were happy. And when you glanced at its colourful trappings, the first layer, that all may well appear to be true. But then you look deeper, listen to the whispers spoken in corners, peer into its shadows… You might find that the truth is very different."

Louise let her eyes wander across the marketplace again, and she saw things that she hadn't spotted before. The number of beggars; men, women pleading desperately for coins, and altogether receiving very little as passersby strode past them without a second glance. The shops that were closed and boarded up, the empty stores and thinned-out shelves on the market stands. The people arguing with the merchants about rising prices. The little gaggles of citizens in their corners whispering fearfully about the nobles, their princess, the troubles in foreign countries and the Holy Church; the men and women exchanging scowling looks and muttering with discontent under their breath as a patrol of city guards made its way through the crowd.

"Does that look like a prosperous, happy city to you, Louise?" Ezio said quietly as one of the city's watchmen barked at the citizens to make way, men and women recoiling in fear. "Because it certainly does not appear that way to me."

"Well… Perhaps… I'm sure it'll pass, once Her Highness begins to rule!" she said stubbornly.

"Perhaps," Ezio agreed, getting to his feet. "Or perhaps it will only get worse. Revolutions have been started by less, after all."

Louise wanted to contradict him, but found that she couldn't. She liked reading history books of all kinds, after all, and stories of riots and rebellions abounded everywhere.

"What now, though?" she asked Ezio as he pushed his way through the crowd, wanting to think of something else. "Weren't we going to look for this Roberto fellow that Fouquet worked with?"

"È vero," Ezio said pensively. "Now, to find his hideaway… Perdonatemi, bella madonna," he said grandly to a young woman, bowing elegantly and smiling.

She smiled back, flushing a bit when she looked him in the eyes. "Er, yes?"

"I am a stranger to this beautiful city, and I seem to have unfortunately lost my way." Ezio grinned, chuckling as if in embarrassment. "But I am sure that a young lady like yourself knows her way around this city, far more than a fool like me does!"

Louise drew her cowl over her brow, rolling her eyes.

"That's not surprising," the young woman said, smiling back. "The city is big, after all. What are you looking for, cher monsieur?"

"An inn, apparently. A place called… 'L'Auberge des Fées Charmantes', I think? Did I pronounce it right?"

The girl flushed a deeper red and then slapped him across the cheek. Before Ezio could recover, she ran past him without looking back.

He blinked once, gingerly working his jaw. "…I am not sure I deserved that."

"Payback for something in your past life?" Louise suggested wryly.

Derflinger cackled. "Keep talking to the girls around here like that, partner, and all their husbands will do far worse to you!"

"Tranquillo, the two of you." Ezio let his hand drop from his flaming cheek, smirking. "Well, at least we now know what to look for!"

"Oh, and where would that be?" Louise said, rolling her eyes.

"From the way that poor girl looked? I would wager ten écu that the Charming Fairies' Inn is a brothel, or something of similar disrepute."

Louise gave him a flat look. "You can't possibly have figured that out by getting slapped once."

"You would be surprised."

"Nonsense. I don't believe you."

"Ten écu, Louise!" Ezio called over his shoulder as he walked ahead, laughing. "Or are you scared that I might just be right, piccina?"

She hurried after him, scowling all the while at his back. "Deal!"

…

Ezio held out his hand, smirking.

Louise glared at him. "You haven't won this bet yet, Ezio. We haven't seen proof that this place is really a brothel."

"Oh, sure we haven't," Derflinger drawled from Ezio's belt, cackling out a tinny laugh. "What was the term that all those fellas used, partner? 'Recreational establishment'? Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?"

"Prostitution is illegal here, apparentemente," Ezio said cheerfully. "I am quite sure that calling it a different name makes the guards look the other way. As long as they are paid enough, of course."

"Well, it's still a mighty fancy word for a whorehouse, that's all I'm saying!" Derflinger mused aloud. "Back in the day, we used to call 'em brothels, or funhouses, or bordellos, or nunneries—"

"Nunneries?!" Louise said, aghast.

"Oh, there's a really funny story behind that name. Wanna hear it?"

"No!"

"Perhaps later," Ezio told the miffed sword, giving it a consoling pat on the pommel. "We have some questions to ask, first."

"Fine," Derflinger muttered under its nonexistent breath. "I'll make the lot of you listen to some glorious history later. Uneducated peons, that's what you are."

"And you are an irritating pain in the neck!" Louise shot back heatedly.

"Play nice, children," Ezio chided them with a smile. "Avoiding any attention in there would be quite welcome, no?"

Louise scowled and snapped her mouth shut, Derflinger shaking in its sheath with hidden amusement as they made their way through the inn's patrons milling outside the door.

The Charming Fairies' Inn was surprisingly famous in the city – or infamous, depending on who they asked. It had been surprisingly easy to find someone to point out the way to it (after Ezio had been slapped a few more times, unfortunately). Located in-between the city's docks on the river banks and its market district, the inn was a large, whitewashed building, three stories high with a pretty blue roof and charming baroque stucco decorations that were the newest fashion from Gallia. In the darkness of the night, its warmly lit windows and the muffled laughter and music sounding out from it made it seem inviting and friendly.

That innocent impression ended very quickly once Louise took her eyes from the building and studied the people standing outside the door. Gaggles of men and women thronged outside, chatting and laughing, and Louise's eyes nearly popped out of her skull when she saw the state of the women's dresses – with those décolletés and high hemlines on their colourful dresses, they made Kirche look positively decent! And the way those men sidled up to them, talked and muttered into their ears as the girls laughed, and even nuzzled them was—

She quickly stepped a bit closer to Ezio, reassured by his presence as he gently pushed his way through the crowd. Those girls were young, easily as young as herself, and those men scared her. He shot her a glance, but said nothing as he pushed open the door.

She blinked at the sudden light and noise of laughter, shouted conversation, and music washing over her, and found herself in something that looked like a ballroom. A set of stairs opposite the entrance led up onto the next floor, more of those girls and women she'd seen outside chatting with some of the guests on the landing. Tables were scattered across the room, serving girls in those same indecent dresses running to and fro taking the orders of the customers, bringing beer, wine, and other drinks from the bar located at the right-hand wall of the establishment. In the far left corner, a crude wooden stage had been raised, and a few musicians were stuck on it, playing the lute, fife, and fiddle for the amusement of the guests.

The patrons shouted for drinks, the girls laughed as they brought said drinks, chatted with their guests and shrieked when they got a bit too frisky, and the music pitched in to make even the loudest conversations difficult to hear. It was bedlam.

Ezio grinned under his cowl. "Looks like a brothel to me," he muttered. "I have seen my fair share of them, you know."

Louise glared daggers at him. "Shut up. It might just be an inn with pretty serving girls."

One of the indecently dressed girls grabbed one of the men and dragged him up the stairs by the collar of his shirt, slamming the door of a room on the second floor behind them, the whoops, wolf-whistles and laughter of the man's companions at the table following them.

Ezio turned towards her with a raised eyebrow. "You were saying?"

Louise met his gaze with her nose high in the air. "Coincidence."

Ezio laughed at her audacity. "Of course, madamigella," he agreed, shaking his head. "All just coincidence."

"Hehehehe…" Derflinger cackled as a waitress passed them with a tray full of beer kegs, smiling coquettishly at Ezio. "Now, those are some beautiful bodies on those girls over there, oh yes, definitely…"

Louise felt the beginnings of a migraine again and decided to ignore the insanity travelling alongside her before she snapped. "Weren't we here for something important?!" she pleaded.

"Of course we were," Ezio agreed solemnly. "The beauty of the female form is always important, after all."

Her eyebrow twitched, but she caught the twinkle in her familiar's eye. She took a deep breath, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing her drop her face into her palm again. "Let's just go," she muttered under her breath, motioning helplessly towards the bar. Ezio just walked ahead of her with a chuckle, skillfully weaving his way through the patrons thronging the bar.

"Scusatemi!" Ezio called out, rapping his knuckles on the wooden top of the bar and waving at one of the waitresses with his other. "Scusatemi, signorine! Would it be possibly to ord—"

"Coming, coming!" a harried voice sang out, and one of the girls came to a screeching halt behind the bar. "Don't leave yet!"

She was a pretty girl with dark hair bound under a simple linen headdress, wearing a pretty green dress that did nothing at all to hide the pendant dangling inside her cleavage. She couldn't have been much older than Louise, and yet her figure was already the kind that men would fight over.

She ran a hand across her forehead, sighing and smiling at them, dark eyes sparkling with good humour. "Sorry, sorry, but we're so busy tonight! Far more guests than usual!"

Ezio laughed. "That's fine."

"Jessica, at your service!" She suddenly frowned. "Why haven't you been seated yet? Where is Marlène?" She craned her neck, cursing under here breath when she spotted a shapely blond waitress flirt shamelessly with one of the customers. "Oh, I'm going to murder her… Sorry, she's supposed to seat new patrons; it makes the whole thing less confusing! Do you want a table, or something to eat?"

"Grazie, but that won't be necess—"

"Just a drink, then? What can I bring the two of you?"

"Oh, for Founder's sake," Louise muttered, rolling her eyes. "We're not here to eat or drink."

Jessica's eyes snapped from Ezio to her, and her smile faltered a bit at the smaller girl's scowl. "Er… I'm sorry, but we're not looking for any more workers; our rooms are all already let, and we have a habit of not taking in unknown courtesans…"

Louise's eyes darkened and she opened her mouth to tell that big-chested moron where exactly she could stick her idea of becoming a courtesan, but Ezio held up a hand and gave Jessica his most charming smile. "She is not looking for work," he said quickly. "And neither am I. I am, however, looking for someone I was told I could find here."

Jessica's eyes became immediately guarded. "Oh? And who would that be?"

'Now,' Ezio thought as he leant over the bar, 'this is getting more and more interesting.' "A man named Scarron. Do you know where to find him?"

"He's my father," she said promptly, glancing from Ezio to Louise with a frown. Her eyes darted to the weapons on their belts, and she edged away. "Why are you looking for him?"

"A mutual acquaintance of ours told me he could help me find a missing friend of mine," Ezio said quickly, smiling in a reassuring manner. "I mean him no harm."

Jessica relaxed, though she still looked suspicious. "Really?"

"Lo giuro," Ezio promised with a smile, placing both his hands on the table where she could see them. It wouldn't stop an Assassin, but the girl didn't need to know that.

"Alright," she said uncertainly, before turning around to shout. "Papa! There's someone here looking for you!"

"Who is it, ma chérie?" a high-pitched voice wafted back.

Jessica's expression grew dubious as she glanced at Ezio. "Someone who says he knows someone you know!"

"That doesn't narrow it down, ma petite! I am a popular fellow, you know!"

"Just come here, papa, please!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming, no need to get angry!" the voice sang out and approached around the bar towards them.

Whoever Ezio had expected when he heard Scarron's voice, it certainly hadn't been anyone like him. He was easily taller than Ezio, if only by an inch or two, but twice as wide, his barrel-like chest stuck in a sleeveless shirt that showed his tanned arms rippling with muscles. An extensively groomed mustache and goatee framed a cheerfully smiling mouth, and as he skipped towards them (yes, skipped), Ezio wondered whether a sight like this was normal in these parts.

He glanced at Louise, whose jaw had dropped open and who stared at the newcomer with undisguised horror plastered all over her face. Apparently, it wasn't.

"Monsieur, mademoiselle!" the man said cheerfully, making a curtsy before them. "Good day to you! What can I do for you on this fine evening?"

"…Are you Messer Scarron?" Ezio asked cautiously, and hoping he would answer no.

The man looked offended. "Ah, non! Non, non! I am not Monsieur Scarron!"

Louise sighed a breath of relief.

"I am Mademoiselle Scarron!"

Louise's forehead smacked down onto the top of the bar with a groan. "Why can't I ever meet normal people?!" she whimpered. "First Kirche and Tabitha, then you, then Fouquet, and now this lunatic…"

Ezio patted her shoulder. "It may not be any consolation, but I thought the same thing when I met you."

"You're not helping!"

Ezio looked up to see Scarron look rather put out and Jessica surveying the scene with undisguised amusement. He would bet any sum of money that he and Louise weren't the first unsuspecting visitors to be waylaid by the owner's unusual taste and mannerisms.

"Please excuse my companion," Ezio said with a grin. "She has had a tiring day."

"Oh, poor dear," Scarron said with motherly concern in his tone. "Is there anything we can do?"

"There is, in effetti," Ezio said quickly, leaning over the bar top and motioning Scarron to come closer. The man did so, intrigued, and Louise looked up to listen in. "I am looking for a man named Roberto."

Scarron laughed, a high-pitched giggle that somehow seemed more feigned than the others. "Oh, but there are many Robertos in this city! Why, there's one on Rue des Aragons, a whole family of them at the Quai de Conti, another on—"

"I think we both know the one I mean," Ezio said sharply, reaching into his collar and bringing out Matilda's silver pendant. It gleamed in the light of the chandelier, and Scarron's face paled. "Does this narrow down your acquaintances, madamigella?"

Scarron's shoulders slumped, and he licked his lips, glancing worriedly from left to right. "…I know which Roberto you want to talk to, Monsieur. But you simply won't be able to."

"Are you trying to stop me?" Ezio asked lowly, his voice growing dangerous.

"No! No, I am not. But Roberto is a ghost, Monsieur. The kind that cannot be found if he refuses to be found." Scarron broke eye contact, his dark eyes peering fearfully into the crowd of patrons around him. His voice grew even quieter, and Ezio strained to hear him. "He has eyes and ears everywhere, and they report everything to him. The nobles have been trying to catch him for years, but they have all failed!"

"I am no noble."

"Even worse!" Scarron hissed, his eyes desperate. "He's been murdering common bounty hunters and competitors in this city's underworld for years, and he's ruthless about anyone muscling in on his territory!"

"Just tell me where to look for him, then."

The landlord shook his head decisively. "No, I will not."

Ezio frowned and shifted slightly, the throwing knives in their leather sheaths creaking. "Prego?" he growled, tensing.

"I will not help you," Scarron repeated firmly, his eyes set. "I have a shop that is running well, without the guards bothering me. I have a home. But most importantly, I have a daughter and many other girls I have to take care of. I shan't risk them getting killed just so you can chase after a ghost."

Ezio stared him in the eye, but Scarron didn't flinch. Ezio looked away first, glancing at Jessica. She had listened to everything, her eyes wide and worried, and he realized once again that she was still a young girl. Most of the women living under Scarron's roof would probably be helpless without him.

Louise opened her mouth to argue, but Ezio placed a hand on her shoulder and silently shook his head. "Have a good evening, madamigelle," he said, politely inclining his head. "We will not bother you again."

Scarron nearly deflated with relief, frantically nodding his thanks, and Jessica smiled.

"But Ezio—" Louise began to protest, but Ezio cut her off.

"These are honest, hard-working people, Louise," he murmured. "Do you want to hurt them just to reach your goal? To impress your principessa?"

She scowled, but turned around when he nudged her. Ezio smiled, glad that he hadn't misjudged his little mistress.

His smile turned to a frown as he steered his small friend back towards the door, wondering how on earth they were going to find this Roberto fellow now. He was the missing link between Fouquet, the attack on the Academy, and this 'Reconquista' group that Matilda had mentioned, he was sure of it. But how to get to—

He stumbled into someone, and was roughly pushed away. "Watch where ye're goin', pal!"

"Mi scusi," Ezio muttered, righting his step and coolly considering the man who had just pushed him. He looked like a common drunkard, all thuggish brawn and little intelligence. "I was lost in thought."

"Well, ye should be careful not to get lost anywhere else, then," the man muttered, glowering. He leered at Louise, who shrank back before him, and began to finger the hilt of a dagger in his belt. "Especially if you go aroun' asking all sorts o' questions, like ye did with the landlord back there… Dangerous questions, that's wot they are… Might just get a nosy lad and lass all cut up and bloody…"

For a moment, Ezio just stared as the man continued to ramble threateningly. Only a few weeks ago, he had narrowly escaped what he though was certain death. He had been dragged to an alien world against his will. He had accepted a partnership with an insecure little girl desperate for acceptance and friendship. He had been swindled, tricked, adrift in an unfamiliar world. He had witnessed the deaths of countless innocents; all of them butchered in the name of shadowy, faceless manipulators, and had nearly been killed again. And he was now as far away from solving the mystery behind it as he had been at the very beginning of this journey.

And now someone had dared to threaten Louise, taunting him with his failure.

At that exact moment, Ezio's frustrations of the past few weeks boiled over, and they did so violently.

He leapt forward, grabbing the thug by his neck and stunning him with a headbutt. He dragged the man's head down, and there was a dull crash as knee met face, lifting the man clear off his feet into the air and sending him flying onto a table, scattering mugs and plates.

The entirety of the Charming Fairies' Inn grew deathly quiet as everyone stared at the man, now writhing insensibly and moaning in pain. Ezio turned his head, glaring challengingly.

And then the fallen man's friends at the upturned table and a few others stood up, murder in their eyes, and the regular patrons and waitresses fought to get out of the way as the men slowly encircled Louise and Ezio.

The Assassin flexed his gauntleted fingers and smiled.

…

Louise quickly turned her back on Ezio and edged closer to him, indistinctly remembering him telling her to always protect her back from unsuspecting attacks – doing so even as the rest of her rational mind began to gibber with fear as it registered the three dangerous-looking men appearing before her. Her mind faintly noted Jessica and Scarron witnessing the brewing debacle behind the bar, both looking horrified.

"…Ezio?!" she hissed out of the corner of her mouth when she saw the men draw daggers and short clubs. "What in Founder's name are we going to do now!?"

He chuckled. "What we do best."

"And that would be…?"

She heard the sharp crack of knuckles. "Improvising!"

And then there a dull thud as an armoured fist hit something that sounded decidedly less armoured, and Louise heard a loud crash as someone flew through the air and cracked his skull against something wooden a moment later.

And then the closest thug facing her charged her with a snarl, wooden club raised high.

Louise yelped and ducked, the cudgel rushing through the space where her head had just been. She remembered Ezio's lessons, her body moving through the exercises fluidly: left leg rooted, right knee up, foot tensed, and lash out.

Heavy leather riding boots crushed testicles, and the thickset man let out a high-pitched shriek of pain, dropping his club and falling to his knees as he grasped at his crotch. Louise kicked him again, catching him under the chin and snapping his head backwards, and this time he fell onto his back and stayed there.

The little noble girl caught movement in the corner of her eye at just the right moment, stepping forward to avoid the dagger aimed at her side. Her arm snapped shut, catching the wrist in her armpit and trapping the blade. Her left foot kicked out against the side of the thinner man's knee, bringing him to the ground before her.

She hesitated for an instant as she saw the surprise and terror in his face, but instinct took over as he tried to grab for her throat. She slammed an open palm into his face, driving the heel of it against his nose. Blood splattered and he collapsed, clutching at his shattered face in disbelief, tears of pain running down his cheeks.

Louise stepped away, feeling disgusted as she tried to get rid of the blood on her hand. 'It's so easy,' she thought, feeling sick.

She heard angry shouts and looked up to see one of the men surrounding her pick up a chair. She yelped as he threw it right at her, dodging behind a table, but two other thugs – one with a club and another with a dagger – moved to trap her against a wall.

"Little help, Ezio!" she yelled as the men approached and she backed away from them into a corner, the chair thrower having drawn a vicious-looking serrated cutlass and grinning in a decidedly unfriendly way.

"Don't kill them, piccina!"

"That's not exactly what I call help!" she shouted back, chancing a glance at the other side of the inn. Ezio had left a trail of broken tables, chairs, and bodies (the latter groaning and writhing on the ground) across the establishment, and was surrounded by a far larger group than she was.

Someone tried to grab him from behind, but he simply hurled the man over his shoulder and stomped on his crotch, fluidly turning on his heel with a simple half-step to avoid taking the full brunt of a bar stool slammed across his back. It broke apart, and Ezio swiftly disarmed the man of his stool leg, grabbed him by the collar, and sent him careening head-first into two of his companions, sending all three to the ground in a cursing tangle of limbs. All in less than three seconds.

"Catch!" he called out, throwing the chair leg across the room.

Remembering every single lesson in swordplay that Ezio had ever given her, she snatched it out of the air, adopting the stance he had drilled into her for weeks and weeks on end.

The lead thug twirled his cutlass and jeered, showing yellow and silver teeth. "Whatcha think ye're gonna do with that thing, little girl? Ain't no one here to protect yo—"

She lunged forwards, seizing the initiative by slamming the end of the stool leg into his stomach and driving the breath from his lungs. He staggered back, and her 'sword' snapped from left to right, delivering a nasty blow across his temple. He fell like a stone.

The other man snarled and charged at her, cudgel sweeping from the side at her head. She dimly remembered that Ezio had once told her that aiming for the head with no other plan was the sure sign of an unskilled brawler, even as she twisted her wrist. The blow landed on the inside of his elbow, making him drop his club. The follow-up broke his knee with a sharp crack, driving him to the floor to kneel before her.

The third blow crushed the man's throat, and he stared at her with wide eyes full of surprise as he fell sideways, gargling uselessly for breath, his chest heaving up and down and his lungs not getting any air.

Louise froze up as she watched him, panicking, and then she was bowled when an entire table was lifted and thrown at her, the heavy wooden planks burying her.

"You little bitch!" she heard the last man snarl, and he kicked against the fallen table, crushing her limbs and making her cry out in pain. "Ye're gonna pay for killing me mates, ye hear that?! Ye're gonna pa—"

There was the sound of struggling, muffled cursing, and a dry crack that sounded much like a musket shot. The pressure on the table disappeared.

She struggled, scrambling backwards on her behind to get free of the heavy table, and managed it a moment later. When Louise looked up, she saw Scarron gently lowering the last thug to the floor. The man's eyes were glassy and his neck askew, his arms hanging limply from his sides.

As Scarron closed the man's eyes with gentle fingers, she shuddered as she imagined those strong arms breaking a grown man's neck as easily as a twig.

She heard a garbled scream, and looked up to see Ezio bodily picking up a man by his belt and throat, lifting him up, and bringing him crashing down onto a table. It snapped in two, and the man moaned and lay still.

Ezio stood up straight, stretching his neck as he surveyed the room. Scattered around him in various stages of unconsciousness lay an easy dozen and a half of the thugs, their arms and knees broken, their noses shattered and bleeding, and those that still could were gasping for breath, writhing and moaning quietly in pain.

He wiped a hand across the corner of his mouth, flicking off the blood there with distaste. "Eighty seconds," he muttered, frowning under his hood. "I have grown slow."

There was a impressed whistle from Derflinger. "…Well, I'll be damned. I'll be damned. I thought you were good, but I never expected anything like this, partner, I'll admit that."

"What did you expect, then?"

"Not this, that's for sure." A rattling laugh. "Anyone ever tell you're a crazy bastard?"

Ezio grinned crookedly. "I shall take that as a compliment."

Louise just stared as Ezio picked his way through the destroyed furniture and broken men over to her. He was breathing slightly, the wound on the corner of his mouth had opened again, but he still looked utterly unperturbed by what had just happened.

He knelt next to her, smiling gently. "Are you alright, piccina?"

She tasted bile and quickly turned away so that she wouldn't vomit all over his knees.

"Ah," she heard him say as she hacked up the last of her dinner. She felt him gently reach past her cheeks for her hair, tucking it away at the back of her neck and gently caressing it. "The rush of battle is over. Don't be ashamed, piccina; it happens to everyone."

The world stopped spinning, and the touch of Ezio's fingers in her hair reassured her, bloodied as they were. A few moments later, the world stopped spinning and her vision cleared again.

"Feeling better?" Ezio asked her with a smile.

Louise nodded, allowing him to help her up so that she could stand on her wobbling knees. She glanced at the man whose throat she had crushed, and saw that his eyes dull and unseeing. She quickly looked away, seeing Scarron shake his head as he surveyed the destruction of his establishment.

"Madness," the landlord muttered. "Utter madness."

Ezio grinned at him. "You are not the first one to tell me that I am insane, madamigella."

Scarron shot him an aggravated look. "Clearly repetition does not improve your understanding of the message, hmm?"

Ezio shrugged cheerfully. "I understand the message well enough. I just refuse to let it bother me."

Scarron sighed. "This will be trouble…" He clapped his hands sharply, turning to his waitresses and the few patrons that hadn't already fled. "Mesdames et Messieurs! Unfortunately, we will have to close for tonight; my apologies! Allez, mes belles fées; time to clean up this unsightly mess! Un, deux, trois, et qu'ca saute!"

After offering a bit more encouragement, Jessica and the other girls began to escort out the last patrons and grabbed brooms and dustpans to clean up the broken glass and clay, shooting suspicious and fearful looks at Ezio and Louise as they went about their business.

Scarron turned back towards them, looking awkward and tired. "I am terribly sorry to inconvenience you," he said, bringing his hands together under his chin in a gesture of apology and shaking his hips, "but I will have to insist that you leave – you seem to attract unwelcome attention!"

Ezio nodded. "I understand." He unhooked his purse, throwing it at the surprised landlord. "For your damages."

The tanned man looked surprised as he inspected the pouch. "That is worth far more than replacing the furniture, monsieur!"

"…May I ask for a favour, then?"

Scarron looked wary. "That depends."

"If any of Roberto's thugs arrive, tell him that I have a message for him from Matilda. If he wants to hear it, all he has to do is find me and answer my questions." Ezio glanced at the number of injured men. "And if he gives you any grief about this scum, tell him that I was responsible for breaking them. And that if he wants to hurt you or me, he should send more skilled fighters next."

"Scary…" Scarron said quietly. "And if Roberto asks for a name?"

"Tell him that Ezio Auditore wishes to speak to him," the Assassin said, nudging Louise towards the door.

"A strong name," Scarron said thoughtfully, putting his hands on his waist and frowning. "You are playing a very dangerous game, Monsieur Ezio."

"That's quite alright," Ezio said, grinning at the landlord over his shoulder. "I am a very dangerous man."

And then they were out in the streets of the capital, the unlikely pair enjoying the cool night breeze and fresh air, the little girl breaking out into elated giggles when she realized how nervous she had been, the taller elder putting a comforting arm around her shoulder and laughing alongside her. The night swallowed them up soon enough.

…

At the same time, a coach pulled by four horses galloped through the darkened streets of the city, the jockey cracking the whip to drive the horses onward and only dragging on the reins when they stopped at a palatial merchant's estate.

The jockey jumped down, hammering on the door. "Open up! Open up, damn you, it's urgent!"

A few moments and incessant hammering later, the door was opened by a startled servant, who was immediately ordered to call his fellows and take care of stabling the horses. The head steward was called, and the man recognized the heraldry on the coach's door immediately, bowing deeply as it swung open. "A pleasure to have you here, sire."

A portly man with groomed hair and a pencil-thin moustache stepped out of the coach, directing an irritated look at the man. "I've had a rather long ride from my estate, so I hope you don't dally in quartering me."

"Of course, sire. Would you like supper? The master has already gone to bed, but I'm sure I can—"

"Hang it all, wake him! I have urgent news, grave news, news that concerns him personally! Get him up now!"

The head steward hurriedly bowed and backed away. "As you wish, Monsieur le Comte de Mott, as you wish…"

Richard de la Vague, Count de Mott, moved to follow him into the house, but glanced for a last time at the twins moons of the Halkeginian sky. He scowled. He had experienced far too many sleepless nights, recently. Far too many headaches.

He huffed and walked inside. If their plans worked out, then a lot of his worries would be abated, but so far…

"By all the Founder and His Saints, Richard! What possessed you to come here at this hour?!"

The count turned to see his benefactor and partner-in-crime, still wearing nightclothes and cap, and a mirthless smile crept up his mouth. "An emergency, old friend. What else could it be?"

"Well, it better be important for you to wake me at this hour—"

Mott told him, and the merchant paled whiter than the nightclothes he was wearing. He wrung his hands. "Oh, what a disaster… We'll have to talk to Monseigneur le Cardinal soon, it seems," the merchant muttered, looking annoyed and fearful at the same time. "Our plans might just fail…"

Mott rolled his eyes, walking over to the window and throwing the shutters open. They showed the Royal Palace in the distance, all proud elegance and weak decadence.

All ripe for the taking.

The Count smirked. "Oh, I really cannot wait."

…

Well, this chapter is done. Next chapter, we will soon unravel the mystery behind Roberto, Matilda, Count Mott, and the Cardinal…

You didn't really think that I was going to leave Mott out of this, did you? He may be anime-only, but he is still one of the more interesting villains in the Zero no Tsukaima franchise. Which says a lot about the franchise, incidentally, because if I remember correctly, he is defeated by Saito bribing him with a porn book to let Siesta go. Apparently, seeing a little bit of softcore pornography is… unusually enticing.

Which makes any half-decent student of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance laugh, because they were not as repressed when it comes to the whole 'sexing–each-other-up' business as later writings would like to have you believe. Rampant prostitution, proto-escort services in the forms of courtesans and rich noble ladies whoring themselves out to dukes and kings, lively clerical debates on which positions should be approved by the Church and which ones should be condemned, how often it should happen, etcetera.

Giving Mott a villainous role beyond 'can-be-bribed-by-naked-boobies' should be fun.

In case you don't mind, I have a few questions that I'd love to have answered in regards to this chapter. In case you want to leave me your usual free-form reviews, though, I'll be happy to read them!

…

What did you think of the little 'prologue' at the beginning? Did it contribute to showing the difference between Ezio and Louise, or was it just wasted space to you?

What did you think of my description of the capital?

Any comments on the pickpocket chase?

Do you think I spent too much time introducing Derflinger and Théoleyre when I could have driven the plot forward? Did you think that the conversation in the shop felt natural, or did you think it was forced?

What did you think of Théoleyre as a character?

What did you think of me giving the characters various accents? Tiresome cliché that only makes reading the story more difficult, or does it make the characters and story seem more lifelike? Should I do it more, less, or stop it altogether?

How did you think I handled Louise's and Ezio's arguments and discussions? Am I wasting your time, or do you enjoy seeing them interact? And what do you think of me adding Derflinger to the mix?

Any comments on my reimagining the 'Charming Faieries' Inn'? What did you think of Scarron and Jessica?

And comments about the fight scene? Should I have focussed more on Ezio and less on Louise? Was it boring? Did it flow well?

Any comments on the overall plot?

And, of course, any and all other comments on any other parts of the chapter are most welcome, no matter whether they're positive or critical. I'll listen to and consider them all.

…

TRANSLATIONS OF FOREIGN PHRASES — COMING SOON.

Sorry, folks, I'm rather knackered. Give me a day or two, and they'll be up.

…

The original light novels of Familiar of Zero (Zero no Tsukaima) were written by Noboru Yamaguchi, originally published by Media Factory in 2004, and are still ongoing after twenty volumes and a four-season anime adaptation by J.C. Staff that premiered in July 2006.

The original video game Assassin's Creed was originally released in 2007 by Ubisoft, followed by its sequels Assassin's Creed II (2009), Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (2010), Assassin's Creed: Revelations (2011), and Assassin's Creed III (October 2012). At the time of this writing (March 2013), Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is announced to be released before April 2014.

Again, please support the official release, and be kind enough to leave a review.