Renaissance

Ezio pointed to the red manikins within the warehouse walls. 'What about the guards inside?'

'When you've dealt with the archers we'll gather here.' Antonio pointed to a piazza nearby which Ezio recognized as the one where Leonardo had his new workshop - he wondered briefly how his friend was progressing with his commissions, '... and discuss the next steps.'

'When do we make our move?' asked Ezio.

'Tonight!'

'Excellent! Let me have a couple of good men. Ugo, Franco, are you with me?' The two nodded, grinning. 'We'll take care of the archers and meet you as you suggest.'

'With our men in place of their archers, they won't suspect a thing.'

'And the next move?'

'Once we've secured the warehouse, we'll launch an attack on the palazzo itself. But remember! Be stealthy! They must not suspect a thing!' Antonio grinned, and spat. 'Good luck, my friends - in bocca al lupo!' He patted Ezio's shoulder.

'Crepi il lupo,' Ezio replied, spitting too. The operation passed off that night without a hitch. The Barbarigo archers didn't know what had hit them, and so subtly were they replaced with Antonio's men that the guards inside the warehouse fell quietly and without much resistance to the thieves' onslaught, having been unaware that their comrades outside had been neutralized.

The attack on the palazzo was next on Antonio's agenda, but Ezio insisted that he went ahead first to assess the lie of the land. Rosa, the last stages of whose recovery had been remarkable thanks to the combined skills of Antonio and Bianca, and who could now climb and leap almost as well as if she had been back to her full fitness, wanted to accompany him, but Antonio, to her anger, vetoed this. It crossed Ezio's mind that Antonio, in the end, considered him more expendable than her, but he brushed off the thought and prepared himself for the reconnaissance mission, strapping on his left arm the Codex guard-brace with its double-dagger, and, on his right, the original spring-blade. He had a lot of difficult climbing to do, and he didn't want to risk the poison-blade since in any circumstances it was a truly lethal weapon and he was keen to avoid any accident with it that might prove fatal to himself.

Pulling his hood up over his head and using the new techniques of upward leaping which Rosa and Franco had taught him, he stormed up the outer walls of the palazzo, silent as a shadow and drawing less attention, until he was on its roof and looking down into its garden. There he noticed two men in deep conversation. They were making for a side gate leading to a narrow, private canal which led round the back of the palazzo. Following their progress from the roof, Ezio could see that a gondola was moored at a little jetty there, its two gondoliers clad in black and its lanterns doused. Sure-footed as a gecko on the roofs and walls, he hastened down and sheltered himself in the branches of a tree from which he could hear their conversation. The two men were Emilio Barbarigo and, as Ezio recognized with a shock, none other than Carlo Grimaldi, one of Doge Mocenigo's entourage. They were accompanied by Emilio's secretary, a spindly man dressed in grey, whose heavy reading glasses kept slipping down his nose.

'... Your little house of cards is crumbling, Emilio,' Grimaldi was saying.

'It's a minor setback, nothing more. The merchants who defy me, and that piece of shit Antonio de Magianis will soon be dead or in chains, or working the oars of a Turkish galley.'

'I'm talking about the Assassin. He's here, you know. That's what's made Antonio so bold. Look, we've all been robbed or burgled, and our guardsmen have been outsmarted; it's as much as I've been able to do to keep the Doge from poking his nose in.'

'The Assassin? Here?'

'You numbskull, Emilio! If the Master knew how stupid you are, you'd be dead meat. You know the damage he's already done to our cause in Florence and San Gimignano.'

Emilio made a fist of his right hand. 'I'll crush him like the bedbug he is!' he snarled.

'Well, he's certainly sucking the blood out of you. Who knows if he's not here now, listening to us as we speak?'

'Now, Carlo - you'll be telling me next you believe in ghosts.'

Grimaldi fixed him with his eyes. 'Arrogance has made you stupid, Emilio. You do not see the whole picture. You are nothing but a big fish in a small pond.'

Emilio grabbed him by the tunic, and pulled him close, angrily. 'Venice will be mine, Grimaldi! I provided all the armaments to Florence! Not my fault if that idiot Jacopo didn't use them wisely. And don't try to make things bad for me with the Master. If I wanted to, I could tell him some things about you which would -'

'Save your breath! I must go now. Remember! The meeting is set ten days from now at San Stefano, outside Fiorella's.'

'I'll remember,' said Emilio sourly. 'The Master will hear then how -'

'The Master will speak, and you will listen,' retorted Grimaldi. 'Farewell!'

He stepped into the darkened gondola as Ezio watched, and it glided off into the night.

'Cazzo!' muttered Emilio to his secretary as he watched the gondola disappear in the direction of the Grand Canal. 'What if he's right? What if that damned Ezio Auditore is here?' He brooded for a moment. 'Look, get the boatmen ready, now. Wake the bastards up if you have to. I want those crates loaded now and I want the boat ready in half an hour by your water-clock. If Grimaldi is speaking the truth, I must find a place to hide, at least until the meeting. The Master will find a way of dealing with the Assassin.'

'He must be working with Antonio de Magianis,' put in the secretary.

'I know that, you idiot!' hissed Emilio. 'Now come, and help me pack the documents we spoke of before our dear friend Grimaldi came calling.'

They moved back towards the interior of the palazzo, and Ezio followed, giving away no more sense of his presence than if he had been a spirit. He blended into the shadows and his footfall was no more noticeable than a cat's. He knew Antonio would hold off the attack on the palazzo until he gave the signal, and first he wanted to get to the bottom of what Emilio was up to - what were these documents of which he had spoken?

'Why won't people listen to sense?' Emilio was saying to his secretary as Ezio continued to tail them. 'All this freedom of opportunity, it just leads to more crime! We must ensure that the State has control of all aspects of the people's lives, and at the same time gives free rein to the bankers and the private financiers. That way, society flourishes. And if those who object have to be silenced, then that is the price of progress. The Assassins belong to a bygone age. They don't realize that it's the State that matters, not the individual.' He shook his head. 'Just like Giovanni Auditore, and he was a banker himself! You'd have thought he'd have shown more integrity!'

Ezio drew in his breath sharply at the mention of his father's name, but continued to pursue his quarry as Emilio and his secretary made their way to his office, selected papers, packed them, and returned to the little jetty by the garden gate where another, larger gondola was now awaiting its master.

Emilio, taking his satchel of papers from his secretary, snapped a last order. 'Send some overnight clothes after me. You know the address.'

The secretary bowed and disappeared. There was no one else about. The gondoliers prepared to cast off, fore and aft.

Ezio sprang from his vantage-point on to the gondola, which rocked alarmingly. With two swift elbow movements, he knocked the boatmen into the water, and then had Emilio by the throat.

'Guards! Guards!' gurgled Emilio, groping for the dagger at his belt. Ezio seized his wrist just as he was about to plunge the weapon into Ezio's belly.