Afterlife

part twelve

by Go-Go Spiders

Ezio quickly climbed up to the roof of Leonardo's workshop, pausing for a moment to orient himself and survey the area. From the position of the sun in the cloudless purple sky, it was late afternoon – less than an hour left before nightfall. There were fewer archers posted along the roofs. Most of the city guards appeared to be on the ground, and there seemed to be fewer out on patrol.

Ezio practiced releasing and retracting the hidden blade again, admiring Leonardo's work. It was a strange weapon, and not one he'd ever seen before. But at the same time having it strapped to his arm felt natural to him. It was meant to be there.

Federico appeared a moment later, climbing up the side of the building. Kneeling on the shingles, Ezio reached down and helped pull him up onto the roof.

"Grazie, Ezio," said Federico. He looked around the area himself, and then frowned slightly. "A lot less guards around."

"That should make for a quick trip back to the brothel, yes?"

Federico gave him an almost pitying look.

"...Erm, no?" said Ezio, uncertainly. "Why?"

"It doesn't seem like Alberti to give up on you so easily," said Federico. "If anything, I'd think he'd have more guards out patrolling the longer it took to find you. He has to know you want revenge for what he's done. Something about this doesn't make sense."

Ezio peered down into the street below, activating his second sight.

He easily spotted the red glow of the guards moving through the crowd, but something else caught his eye. Rectangular patches dotting the walls of buildings along the street were glowing, but the world through his second sight was too blurry and washed out for him to make out what they were clearly.

He switched back to his normal vision and squinted. Stuck to the side of one building by an arrow was a poster bearing his face below the Pazzi family crest, offering a reward of 50,000 florins for his capture, dead or alive. Looking closer, he spotted many identical posters plastered across the streets. One near an apothecary's cart had a small crowd of at least twenty people surrounding it, loudly discussing what they'd do with the reward money.

Ezio's heart sank. The reward had been 10,000 florins this morning – still more money than most people in the city earned in a year. 50,000 florins was an almost ludicrously huge amount of money, enough to last the rest of someone's life. With a bounty that high, his face would be the most known in Firenze, and severely curtail his ability to blend in with crowds like Paola had taught him.

Now, he not only had to contend with staying one step in front of the city guards, but anyone who'd be after his head for the 50,000 florin prize on it.

With a sigh, Ezio pointed towards the closest poster. "Federico, look."

Federico quickly read the poster and let out a loud string of curses. "So the guards got around to putting posters up while we were at Leonardo's workshop," he said.

"It seems that way. What should we do?"

Federico thought a moment. "Stay out of sight of the guards for a few minutes, little brother. I'll see what I can do about those posters."

He dove off the roof, adopting the pose his father had shown him and Ezio for jumping off of buildings – what he'd called a leap of faith – although there was nothing to cushion his fall beneath him. For several moments he felt weightless, almost like he was flying. Federico felt a rush of almost giddy exhilaration as gravity returned and he was pulled down, the ground rushing up to meet him. While he was in mid-air, he rotated his body so that he was falling feet-first. With a grunt, he landed on the flagstones with a sudden jolt that probably would've shattered one of his legs if he'd still been alive. As a ghost it didn't exactly hurt, but he stumbled forward a few steps, shaking off the pins and needles sensation in his legs.

Weaving between the crowd of people in the street, Federico approached the nearest poster with his brother's face printed on it. He tore the parchment away from the arrow pinning it to the wall, letting the wind carry it tumbling down the street.

If the posters had only been up for a few hours, perhaps taking them down would keep word from spreading about the reward – and it would be much easier for Ezio to move among a crowd unnoticed if he wasn't passing by posters with his own face advertising the 50,000 florins for his arrest or death.

'One poster down, several dozen more to go,' he thought with a sigh. The patrolling guards had plastered the posters across almost every building, even in spots that most people wouldn't be able to see from the ground.

He quickly worked his way down the street, pulling down posters when nobody was looking, until he reached the crowd gathered around the last poster next to the apothecary's wheeled cart. Although he couldn't see the apothecary's face through the bird-like mask he wore, he seemed to be trying to ignore the crowd, who were obviously more interested in the reward for Ezio than anything the he had to sell.

Federico watched the group for a moment, trying to figure out a way to distract them long enough for him to tear the poster down without drawing too much attention.

"They're offering that much for the son of Giovanni Auditore?" one young man, the son of a noble if his extravagant clothing was any indication, was loudly boasting to the others. "They can keep the reward money - I can catch him in no time at all! I'll cut off his traitorous head and parade it through the city!"

Rolling his eyes, Federico drove his elbow into the man's side. He was rewarded with the man letting out a surprised shriek and stumbling back into the apothecary's wheeled cart, nearly toppling it over.

Federico had his distraction.

Scattered laughter ran through the assembled crowd. His cheeks red with embarrassment, the man looked around to locate whoever had struck him, curling both of his large hands into fists.

"Be careful," the apothecary snapped irritably, righting some of the glass bottles and jars that the man had knocked over. "Don't you have any sense at all, child?"

As the man shrilly insisted, to the amusement of the crowd, that he wasn't to blame, someone had shoved him, Federico saw his chance.

"Mi dispiace, il mio amico," he said to the apothecary, wedging himself into the small space between the cart and the wall. He quickly ripped the poster down, letting it drift to the flagstones. No one in the crowd appeared to notice.

Satisfied, Federico climbed back up to the roof where he'd left Ezio, only to find him no longer there. "Ezio?" he called.

His brother didn't answer.

Confused, he glanced around at the surrounding buildings. The archers were still patrolling the rooftops nearby, and the guards in the streets weren't chasing anyone wearing Father's robes. Nobody was screaming 'Auditore!' at the top of their lungs. There would've been more of a commotion if Ezio had been caught.

But if he hadn't been captured, where was he?

Federico ran from rooftop to rooftop, combing the area for his brother. Everywhere he looked, there was no sign of Ezio.

What had happened to his brother?

After seeing the trailer, I'm really hyped for the Assassin's Creed movie. Man, December seems so far away...