受信箱

[newpest]

武 Лев Ковач

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[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.

[hiddenblade]

A cynic just the same. There are many in Ezio's social circle, of course, but a new one always presents new challenges: the contours of their doubt, the seeds planted deep within them.

"The villa is a safe shelter in times of war, and when Monteriggioni fell, we evacuated the people through here," Ezio replies, amiably. "But it could have served better uses."

He beckons Kovacs to follow him into the adjoining room, a bedroom with a two-person table set up with chairs. The room is much warmer than the white marble foyer, with plush bedding and ornately carved furniture, but it is pristine and untouched, the curtains drawn.

[newpest]

The furniture is inviting, the decor is lovely, Kovacs really hopes he's not about to be propositioned.

"You a solider?" He leans like a crane above the table. "Or a rich boy caught up in it?"

[hiddenblade]

The setting is unremarkable to Ezio; entertaining guests in a room like this does not strike him as odd at all. It's more hospitable than any other room in the place. Fit, he thinks, for someone he is meant to work with so closely.

But in light of the week he's had, it feels like an overcompensation.

"I grew up wealthy," he confirms, and he sets about setting the table. "I have had some training here, but I have done a little bit of everything. A bodyguard, a consultant, a financier, a teacher..."

A shrug, a little flippant.

"I would get bored if I was just a soldier."

[newpest]

Kovacs watches everything with the bland expression of a man taking in information and giving none. If he's going to be stabbed with cookery, he'd prefer to know in advance.

"Don't underestimate soldiering. If you like killing civilians, you can fill up a lot of hours."

[hiddenblade]

Ezio pauses and fits Kovacs with a raised eyebrow.

"I do not kill civilians," he replies crisply. "Under any circumstance."

[newpest]

There. Got him.

"We got paid by headcount." A shrug, like what can you do.

[hiddenblade]

Ezio sets a pair of wine glasses down, and not for the first time, he thinks of Larry, and how stark this difference is. He rounds the table, finishing up.

"If you are looking for judgment, you will have it," Ezio replies. "But I doubt it was money for you."

Soldiers are not paid that well, and Kovacs' disdain feels too sharp for that.

[newpest]

Kovacs sneers. He's learned to use this face, and its flattened ugliness. The eyes, venal, the mouth, sharp.

"You got a read on me already?"

[hiddenblade]

Ezio just gestures at the room around them. He's relaxed even as Kovacs flares up.

"You would sooner burn this to the ground than live in it. It would make you a hypocrite –– perhaps a worse than you already are."

[newpest]

Kovacs doesn't move. He just stares studying the man before him. Smarter than most he's dealt with in the last few weeks, but that's like giving him an award for not sticking rocks up his fucking nose.

"We're all hypocrites. It one of the wonderful things that unites all humanity."

It's fun, quoting Quell at times like these.

[hiddenblade]

"So what? We are not talking about all of humanity," Ezio replies, shrugging. "We are talking about you. What you have done. Would you willingly be one over something you feel so strongly over?"