Brotherhood

THIRTY-THREE

The evening wore on. Ezio listened to the voices around him—“Do it again!” “No, no—you’re hurting me!” “No, you can’t do that. I won’t allow it!”—and all the sounds of pain and pleasure—the pain real, the pleasure simulated.

The Banker was not running out of steam, unfortunately, and lost patience with his fumbling and started to tear the girl’s dress off her. She still implored Ezio with her eyes to hold his ground. “I can handle this!” she seemed to be saying to him.

He looked around the room again. Some of the servants and most of the guards had been inveigled by the guests to join in the fun. He noticed people wielding wooden and ivory dildos and little black whips.

Soon…

“Come here, my dear,” the Banker was saying, pushing the girl back down onto the couch and managing to straddle her, pushing himself into her. Then his hands closed around her neck and he started to strangle her. Choking, she struggled, then fainted.

“Oh, yes! That’s nice!” he gasped, the veins in his neck bulging. His fingers tightened around the girl’s neck. “This should increase your pleasure. It certainly increases mine!” A minute later he had finished and lay heavily on her body, slipping on their sweat, catching his breath.

He had not killed the girl. Ezio could see the rise and fall of her chest.

The Banker clawed his way to his feet, leaving her prostrate form half on and half off the couch.

He snapped out an order to a pair of servants, still on duty nearby: “Get rid of her!”

As the Banker moved toward the main orgy, Ezio and the servants watched him go. As soon as he was at a safe distance, and otherwise occupied, the servants lifted the girl gently onto the couch, placed a carafe of water near her, and covered her with a fur rug. One of them noticed Ezio. Ezio put a finger to his lips. The man smiled and nodded. At least there was some good in this fetid hellhole.

Ezio shadowed the Banker as he pulled up his long johns and moved from group to group, muttering his appreciation like a connoisseur in an art gallery.

“Oh,bellissima,” he would say from time to time, stopping to watch. Then he made for the ironbound door he’d originally appeared from and knocked on it. It was opened from within by the second attendant, who’d almost certainly been spending all that time verifying the new accounts.

Ezio didn’t give them a chance to close the door behind them. He leapt forward and his impetus pushed both men back inside. Ezio closed the door and faced them. The attendant, a little man, now in his shirtsleeves, burbled and fell to his knees, a dark stain flowering between his legs. Then he fainted. The Banker drew himself up.

“You!” he said. “Assassino! But not for much longer.” His arm snaked out to a bellpull, but Ezio was quicker. The hidden-blade sprang out and slashed through the fingers of the hand the Banker was extending. The Banker snatched his maimed hand back as three fingers scattered onto the carpet. “Stay back!” he screamed. “Kill me and it’ll do no good! Cesare will never let you live! But—”

“Yes?”

The man’s face became sly. “If you spare me…”

Ezio smiled. The Banker understood. He nursed his ruined hand.

“Well,” he said, though tears of pain and rage were starting in his eyes, “at least I have lived. The things I have seen, felt, tasted. I regret none of them. I do not regret a moment of my life.”

“You have played with the trinkets power brings. A man of real strength would be contemptuous of such things.”

“I gave the people what they wanted!”

“You delude yourself.”

“Spare me!”

“Your own debt is due,Eminenza. Unearned pleasure only consumes itself.”

The Banker fell to his knees, mumbling half-remembered prayers.

Ezio raised the hidden-blade.

“Requiescat in pace,” he said.

He left the door open when he departed. The orgy had declined into sleepy, smelly groping. One or two of the guests, supported by servants, were vomiting. Another pair of servants was carrying out a corpse—it had all evidently been too much for someone’s heart. There was no one left on guard.

“We are ready,” said a voice at his elbow. He turned to see Claudia. Around her, around the room, a dozen girls detached and disentangled themselves and stood. Among them, dressed again and looking shaken but otherwise determined, was the girl the Banker had molested so vilely. The servants who had helped her stood by her. More recruits.

“Get out of here,” said Claudia. “We’ll recover the money. With interest.”

“Can you—?”

“Just—just this once, trust me, Ezio.”