Free Assassin's Creed: Renaissance by Oliver Bowden

that the watch would still be out looking for him relentlessly, he made his way via back alleys to Cristina’s family mansion. He didn’t want to put her in any danger, but he needed to collect his pouch with its precious contents. He waited in a dark alcove that stank of urine, not moving even when rats scuttled at his feet, until a light in her window told him that she had retired for the night.
    ‘Ezio!’ she cried as she saw him on her balcony. ‘Thank God you’re alive.’ Her face flooded with relief – but that was short-lived, grief taking over. ‘Your father, and brothers…’ She couldn’t finish the sentence, and her head bowed.
    Ezio took her in his arms, and for several minutes they just stood holding each other.
    Finally, she broke away. ‘You’re mad! What are you still doing in Florence?’
    ‘I still have matters to attend to,’ he said grimly. ‘But I cannot stay here long, it’s too big a risk for your family. If they thought you were harbouring me -‘
    Cristina was silent.
    ‘Give me my satchel and I’ll be gone.’
    She fetched it for him, but before she gave it to him said, ‘What about your family?’
    ‘That is my first duty. To bury my dead. I can’t see them thrown into a lime-pit like common criminals.’
    ‘I know where they have taken them.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘The town’s been talking all day. But no one will be there now. They’re down near the Porta San Niccolò, with the bodies of paupers. There’s a pit prepared, and they’re waiting for the lime-carts to come in the morning. Oh, Ezio – !’
    Ezio spoke calmly but grimly. ‘I must see to it that my father and my brothers have a fitting departure from this earth. I cannot offer them a Requiem Mass, but I can spare their bodies indignity.’
    ‘I’ll come with you!’
    ‘No! Do you realize what it would mean if you were caught with me?’
    Cristina lowered her eyes.
    ‘I must see that my mother and sister are safe too, and I owe my family one more death.’ He hesitated. ‘Then I will leave. Perhaps for ever. The question is – will you come with me?’
    She drew back, and he could see a host of conflicting emotions in her eyes. Love was there, deep and lasting, but he had grown so much older than she since they had first held each other in their arms. She was still a girl. How could he expect her to make such a sacrifice? ‘I want to, Ezio, you don’t know how much – but my family – it would kill my parents -‘
    Ezio looked at her gently. Though they were the same age, his recent experience had made him suddenly far more mature than she was. He had no family to depend on any more, just responsibility and duty, and it was hard. ‘I was wrong to ask. And who knows, perhaps, some day, when all this is behind us -‘ He put his hands to his neck and from the folds of his collar withdrew a heavy silver pendant on a fine chain of gold. He took it off. The pendant bore a simple design – just the initial letter ‘A’ of his family name. ‘I want you to have this. Take it, please.’

    With trembling hands she accepted it, crying softly. She looked down at it, then up at him, to thank him, to make some further excuse.
    But he was gone.

    On the south bank of the Arno, near the Porta San Niccolò, Ezio found the bleak place where the bodies were arranged next to a huge gaping pit. Two sorry-looking guards, raw recruits by the look of them, patrolled nearby, dragging their halberds as much as carrying them. The sight of their uniforms aroused Ezio’s anger, and his first instinct was to kill them, but he had seen enough of death that day, and these were just country boys who’d stumbled into uniforms for want of anything better. It caught at his heart when he saw his father’s and his brothers’ bodies lying near the edge of the pit, still with their nooses round their scorched necks, but he could see that, once the guards fell asleep, as they surely soon would, he could carry the corpses to the river’s