The Other Side of the River

I don’t own the boys. I’m just playing with them for a bit.

The Other Side of the River
by Michalyn
Fandom: Fuyumi Souryo’s Cesare
Pairings: Cesare + Michelotto
Rating: PG
Word Count:854
Notes: Birthday fic for liriaen. Set somewhere during chapter six.
Summary: Miguel knows the real Pisa.

If you want to see the true Pisa … I’ll show you what lies on the opposite bank of the Arno.

Right. Miguel snorted. He rolled the body onto its back with a grunt. The water lapped blackly against the riverbank and he was careful to avoid slipping on the mud squelching underfoot. Instead of taking Angelo through a few stinking alleys, if Cesare really wanted to show their little Fiorentine amigo the true Pisa he should have let Miguel be his guide. Then Angelo would have no illusions about the world he lived in or the man who so fascinated him.

Miguel crouched, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “But he doesn’t want to shatter too many illusions, does he?” he whispered, patting the cheek of the corpse next to him.

The dead nobleman, who was in fact no man at all but a boy of their age, stared blankly ahead. His blond curls reflected silver in the moonlight, the color marred only near the temples where the hair was black with clotted blood. He looked remarkably like Angelo and was beautiful in the pale pretty way of the Fiorentine: large blue eyes … rosebud lips. (The death was recent enough that not all color had faded from the skin.) In fact, in the darkness it was impossible to tell the difference. Yet, Cesare had chosen this one to die and the other to live.

Miguel worked unhurriedly but efficiently, checking the body one last time to make sure he had not missed any hidden documents before tying a weight to the boy’s ankles. The brilliant topaz ring on the lordling’s forefinger he ignored. He never bothered with trinkets. Information was Cesare’s power. Everything else was useless.

Miguel peered at his unfortunate companion. Sometimes he knew who they were. Most often, they were the men of clear strategic importance. Other times like these, he knew nothing of his victims or why they must be eliminated. He only accepted that they fit somewhere in the sprawling schema inside Cesare’s mind.

Miguel dragged the body to the water’s edge and let it roll down the incline. It sank with only a small splash. After yesterday’s rains, the corpse would be carried far downstream by the time Miguel returned to Cesare. They didn’t care if it was discovered. The current would create enough confusion that no one would be able to untangle exactly where the body had come from. “Drownings” were common enough anyway among those foolish enough to venture out alone in these parts—especially among the rich.

Miguel began making his way back towards the city lights. He murdered but he was not indifferent. It was merely that once one knew Cesare nothing as trivial as a single conscience could stand in the way of his vision. One must either yield or break under the force of that will. Besides, there was a part of Miguel that was fascinated by the crude egalitarianism of death. Whether his target wore rags or velvet, they all bled the same; all stank the same in that last ignominious moment when the limbs stopped moving and the bowels released.

Not that Miguel had anything against hierarchy per se. He was more suspicious of innocence.

Once on the bridge, Miguel turned back to watch the vastness of the water. The cool wind tickled the hair about his cheeks and it occurred to him that at every crucial moment in his life he had never been far from a river. As a boy in Valencia he had played beside Rio Turia and now here he was with the Arno rushing beneath his feet.

Of course, why shouldn’t it be so? The Greeks believed the Styx separated the mortal world from the realm of the gods. Most men were fated to shuttle from the earth and back to non-existence with nothing to recommend them. Their lives were banal and narrow, mere flickers on the line of fate. Yet, a golden few like Cesare came from the other side—the side where the gods beckoned. They touched the world once and set it ablaze with their incandescence.

As for Miguel, he was merely the oarsman who would cross the river over and over again, never staying long on one bank, but always in the service of a greater power. He needed no coin as payment. He lived only for Cesare’s touch and his smile. He had always known that the only way to touch a god and not be consumed was to live in his shadow. Most of all, to gain access to that immortal plane a man of ordinary power had but one choice: It was to cross the river—to row the boat and carry the dead over one body at a time.

Miguel quickened his step, blending into the shadows and darting into alleyways Cesare himself had traversed only hours before. The roar of the river followed him all the way back to the estate. Already he was imagining the warm bed and the even hotter embrace awaiting him.

His master was calling. Time to return to the other side.
End