As they spoke, Mario appeared. “Ezio,
“We will talk more of this,” Ezio told her. “I am bidden to a meeting that my uncle has convened. I am expected to explain myself, I think. But afterward—let us arrange to see each other afterward.”
“The meeting concerns me, too,” said Caterina. “Shall we go in?”
SIX
The room was very familiar to Ezio. There, on the now-exposed inner wall, the pages of the Great Codex were arranged in order. The desk, usually littered with maps, was cleared and around it, on severe straight-backed chairs of dark wood, sat those members of the Assassins’ Brotherhood who had gathered at Monteriggioni, together with those of the Auditore family who were privy to its cause. Mario sat behind his desk, and at one end sat a sober, dark-suited man, still young-looking, though with deep lines of thought now etched into his forehead, who had become one of Ezio’s closest associates, but also one of his most unremitting critics—Niccolo Machiavelli. The two men nodded guardedly at each other as Ezio went over to greet Claudia and his mother, Maria Auditore, matriarch of the family since his father’s death. Maria hugged her only surviving son hard, as if her life depended on it, and looked at him with shining eyes as he broke free and took a seat near Caterina and opposite Machiavelli, who now rose and looked questioningly at him. Clearly there was going to be no polite prologue to the matter at hand.
“First, perhaps, I owe you an apology,” began Machiavelli. “I was not present in the Vault and urgent business took me to Florence before I could truly analyze what happened there. Mario has given us his account, but yours alone can be the full one.”
Ezio rose in his turn and spoke simply and directly. “I entered the Vatican and encountered Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, and confronted him. He was in possession of one of the Pieces of Eden, the Staff, and used it against me. I managed to defeat him and, using the combined powers of the Apple and the Staff, gained access to the Secret Vault, leaving him outside. He was in despair and begged me to kill him. I would not.” Ezio paused.
“What then?” prompted Machiavelli, as the others watched silently.
“Within the Vault were many strange things—things not dreamed of in our world.” Visibly moved, Ezio forced himself to continue in level tones. “A vision of the goddess Minerva appeared to me. She told of a terrible tragedy that would befall mankind at some future time. But she also spoke of lost temples that may, when found, lead us to a kind of redemption and aid us. She appeared to invoke a phantom that had some close connection with me, but what that was, I cannot tell. And after her warning and her predictions, she vanished. I emerged to see the Pope dying—or so it seemed; he told me he appeared to have taken poison. But then something compelled me to return. I seized the Apple, but the Staff and a great Sword, which may have been another Piece of Eden, were swallowed up by the earth, and I am glad of it. The Apple alone, which I have given in custody to Mario, is already more than I personally wish to have responsibility for.”
“Amazing!” cried Caterina.
“I cannot imagine such wonders,” added Claudia.
“So—the Vault did not house the terrible weapon we feared—or at any rate, the Templars did not gain control of it. This at least is good news,” said Machiavelli evenly.
“What of this goddess—Minerva?” Claudia asked. “Did she appear—like us?”
“Her appearance was human, and also superhuman,” Ezio said. “Her words proved that she belonged to a race far older and greater than ours. The rest of her kind died many centuries ago. She’d been waiting for that moment all that time. I wish I had the words to describe the magic she performed.”
“What are these temples she spoke of?” put in Mario.
“I know not.”
“Did she say we should search for them? How do we know what to look for?”
“Perhaps we should—perhaps the quest will show us the way.”
“The quest must be undertaken,” said Machiavelli crisply. “But we must clear the path for it first. Tell us of the Pope. He did not die, you say?”
“When I returned, his cope lay on the chapel floor. He himself had disappeared.”
“Had he made any promises? Had he shown repentance?”
“Neither. He was bent on gaining the power. When he saw he was not going to get it, he collapsed.”
“And you left him to die.”
“I would not be the one to kill him.”
“You should have done so.”
“I am not here to debate the past. I stand by my decision. Now we should discuss the future. What we are to do.”
“What we are to do is made all the more urgent by your failure to finish off the Templar leader when you had the chance.” Machiavelli breathed hard, but then relaxed a little. “All right, Ezio. You know in what high esteem we all hold you. We would not have got anything like this far without the twenty years of devotion you have shown to the Assassins’ Brotherhood and to our Creed. And a part of me applauds you for not having killed when you deemed it unnecessary to do so. That is also in keeping with our code of honor. But you misjudged, my friend, and that means we have an immediate and dangerous task ahead of us.” He paused, scanning the assembled company with eagle eyes. “Our spies in Rome report that Rodrigo is indeed a reduced threat. He is at least somewhat broken in spirit. There is a saying that it is less dangerous to do battle with a lion’s whelp than with an old, dying lion; but in the case of the Borgia the position is quite otherwise. Rodrigo’s son, Cesare, is the man we must match ourselves against now. Armed with the vast fortune the Borgia have amassed by fair means and foul—but mostly foul”— Machiavelli allowed himself a wry smile—“he heads a large army of highly trained troops and with it he intends to take over all Italy—the whole peninsula—and he does not intend to stop at the borders of the Kingdom of Naples.”
“He would never dare—he could never do it!” Mario roared.
“He would and he could,” snapped Machiavelli. “He is evil through and through, and as dedicated a Templar as his father the Pope ever was, but he is also a fine though utterly ruthless soldier. He always wanted to be a soldier, even after his father made him Cardinal of Valencia when he was only seventeen years old! But as we all know, he resigned from that post—the first cardinal in the Church’s history to do so! The Borgia treat our country and the Vatican as if they were their own private fiefdom! Cesare’s plan now is to crush the North first, to subdue the Romagna and isolate Venice. He also intends to extirpate and destroy all of us remaining Assassins, since he knows that in the end we are the only people who can stop him.
“My uncle mentioned a sister,” Ezio began.
Machiavelli turned to him. “Yes. Lucrezia. She and Cesare are…how shall I say? Very close. They are a very close-knit family; when they are not killing those other brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, whom they find inconvenient to them, they are…coupling with each other.”
Maria Auditore could not suppress a cry of disgust.
“We must approach them with all the caution we would use to approach a nest of vipers,” Machiavelli concluded. “And God knows where and how soon they will next strike.” He paused and drank half a glass of wine. “And now, Mario, I leave you. Ezio, we will soon meet again, I trust.”
“You’re leaving this evening?”
“Time is of the essence, good Mario. I ride for Rome tonight. Farewell!”
The room was silent after Machiavelli left. After a long pause, Ezio said bitterly, “He blames me for not killing Rodrigo when I had the chance.” He looked around at them. “You all do!”
“Any of us might have made the decision you made,” said his mother. “You were sure he was dying.”
Mario came and put an arm around his shoulders. “Machiavelli knows your value—we all do. And even with
