受信箱

[newpest]

武 Лев Ковач

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[newpest]

Brutish, ugly and short.

They're called meths, from Methuselah. It's some bible thing. You familiar?

[hiddenblade]

[Unsurprising, and yet even more disgusting. Still, it amuses him a touch to hear "some bible thing"; the foundational text of the most powerful church in his time, some ambiguous thing.]

They should be named for Enoch, who lived three hundred years or so. His son Methuselah died aged nine-hundred sixty-nine.

I was raised Catholic.

[newpest]

Yeah, I hear that's big some places.

I worked for meths. If I wasn't here, I still would be.

[hiddenblade]

People who are not Catholics in my time are disdained, exiled, or sometimes even burned as heretics. I was surprised to hear people here speak so confidently about their lack of belief.

What would you be doing for them?

[newpest]

Perks of being from a place without any.

What they paid me to. Mutually beneficial.

[hiddenblade]

Do you enjoy what you do?

[newpest]

Which part?

[hiddenblade]

Tell me what you do, then. What are you paid for?

[newpest]

At the moment, solving a murder. Cleanest shit I've done in years. Used to do sleeve smuggling.

[hiddenblade]

[The sound of paper turning as he double checks on the meaning of "sleeve." The broad strokes are easy to wrap his head around.]

Solving a murder is the least destructive thing I have ever heard of a tyrant doing. Is it preferable to your other work?

[newpest]

Yeah, well, it's his own murder. Vanity project.

Worse. I have to talk to the fucker almost every day.

[hiddenblade]

Maledetto pezzo di merda.

[Well, it's a miserable position to be in. But no matter what a piece of work Bancroft is, it's still Kovacs' actions that have landed him here.]

What are the consequences of walking away? Assuming you would even have somewhere else preferable to go.

[newpest]

Наздравље.

I go back in the dark, the body goes back on ice. Do I gotta explain how stacks work? I thought you guys got debriefed.

[hiddenblade]

I know what stacks are. I also know you have done this mercenary work since well before Bancroft, presumably with some choice in the matter. You did not want to walk away then? Did that change when the choice had been taken from you?

[newpest]

What can I say? I like being my own boss.

[hiddenblade]

Good. [That's a start.]

Join me for a meal tonight. We will get to know each other, one man to another. Talk about this mercenary business again tomorrow.

[No escaping it, but there needs to be a moment to settle.]

[newpest]

Your place or mine?

[hiddenblade]

Mine. I have too much space and never enough guests to fill it.

[newpest]

"Better be good fucking food."

And the feed goes dead. Kovacs takes his time getting there, unsure what to expect, and deciding it doesn't really matter. This isn't a Bancroft situation. This guy can't make him do anything.

So he shows up in a rumpled summer suit, knocking on some ornate Meth door. What a hypocrite.

[hiddenblade]

Ezio answers the door promptly, dressed in a well-tailored set of leather breaches and a heavily embroidered doublet over full white sleeves. He is broad-shouldered and fit, his long hair pulled back with a ribbon and his beard carefully trimmed, save for the bare streak around the scar snaking down his lip. He smiles warmly, but he carries himself seriously.

"Come in," he says, stepping back and beckoning Kovacs in.

Yes, it's an extremely Meth-looking place, give or take eight hundred years.

[newpest]

Kovacs doesn't know enough about Earth history to catch the difference. Eccentric clothes, eccentric house, Kovacs is looking for the sliced tiger.

The guy did make one mistake, though. Stone like this echoes like a motherfucker. There have to be places where it twists sounds, picks them up and reverberates them. Kovacs walks in, and for one of the few times in his life, doesn't take off his shoes. He clacks them every chance he can get on that floor, listening, listening.

"Helluva place you got here."

[hiddenblade]

In a hall used to having soldiers and city-people coming and going, the sound echoes off the high ceilings, through the arches into the adjoining rooms; who can say how deep it goes? Ezio lets him go, closing the door and following behind.

"It was my uncle's," he replies. "He was a condottiere –– a mercenary lord."

[newpest]

Kovacs figures there's no place to whisper here that wouldn't get a broadcast. Cleverer than he dresses, this Ezio guy.

"That make you a mercenary prince?"

[hiddenblade]

"No," he replies, with a short laugh. "He left no heirs, and earmarked it for the public, but even if he hadn't... it was invaded and captured seven years ago. I could not tell you who occupies it now."

[newpest]

"Yeah... for the best. What's the public gonna do? Starve on marble floors?"

He keeps walking, watching the tonality of his voice, the way it reverberates. "Nice of him, though."

He can't escape that.