Chương 451: Chapter 434 - Maestro Ospite

Virgilia stopped before the door and knocked without ceremony. Alonso was mildly intrigued as to why she hadn't simply sent a pulse, before registering that the chamber beyond was completely sealed from his entire sensorial spectrum, including EM. A few seconds passed in silence before the large doors swung open.

Contrary to whatever he had been expecting, what greeted him first was a beautiful young woman moving in the opposite direction, carrying the particular energy of someone who had dressed faster than was ideal. Her collar sat slightly askew, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere past both of them as she swept through the doorway and down the corridor without a word. The colour in her cheeks did the talking for her. Alonso watched her go, then turned back to the room.

"Well, if it isn't Lady D'Aubremort," a deep, unhurried voice carried from inside, warm with amusement.

"What a pleasure." The man it belonged to stood with his back to them behind a broad desk of dark wood, facing the tall window beyond it, hands clasped loosely behind him as he looked out over Venettia. Vittorio Ardighieri Stage 1 –??? He looked perhaps 50-60, the thick grey of his hair swept back with a carelessness that somehow landed as style, a beard of the same shade trimmed close but not obsessively so.

Behind him, a bottle of deep red lifted itself and poured into a glass without being touched, while his shirt buttons did up one by one from the bottom with the same quiet efficiency. By the time he turned, only the top two remained open... enough to suggest a sculpted frame beneath that had no business looking the way it did on a man his age.

He picked up the glass and turned to face them at last, his eyes moving between the two of them with the calm attention of someone accustomed to reading a room before anyone in it had finished deciding what to say. Alonso noticed in the man a faint resemblance to his own current features... which was probably the intention from the start. The mask had clearly been tailor made well before it was ever handed to him. A moment later the doors behind them closed, the mood shifting slightly as they did.

"So, this is the child?" Vittorio said, speaking in Venetian, his eyes moving over Alonso briefly with the mild interest of someone glancing at a piece of furniture they hadn't ordered, before sliding back to Virgilia entirely, his expression changing as they did, the smile that followed slow and unambiguously warm in a way that had nothing to do with hospitality.

"Yes. This is Darius Ardighieri," Virgilia said, her tone rather flat.

"Darius, was it." A pause.

"Dreadful name. Well, whatever... let's say for the sake of appearances your poor mother chose it." He turned back to Alonso.

"So. Darius. From now on you are a Maestro Ospite of my Academy, effective immediately. You will give a lecture in an hour, something short, let your face circulate through the gossip channels... in this city that is faster and more reliable than any formal introduction. After that, the Academy asks nothing of you. Come and go as you please."

"Just one lecture?" Alonso said.

"One is enough. Half these children have never been lectured by a proper Grandmaster. The other half think they have." A faint smile.

"Disabuse them of that notion and you will have done more for this institution than most of my permanent staff manage in a year." A moment later a wooden chest floated from a drawer in the desk and settled into Alonso's hands.

At his touch it opened, revealing inside a set of clothing overlay that carried the same structured elegance as the lecturers he had passed in the corridors, though with a distinct single shoulder pad of deep obsidian finish, smooth and without colour, the kind that announced rank without needing to advertise it.

Beside it, a token sat in the corner of the chest, its surface carrying a clean, distinct signature that read: Darius Ardighieri Maestro Ospite — L'Accademia de l'Arte Letale Alonso could still feel the faint warmth radiating from the name on the token… the man had clearly added 'Darius' just now with an EM pulse, almost too casually, like signing a document mid-conversation.

"Isabetta will be waiting outside and will guide you to whatever you need," Vittorio said, his grin suggesting Isabetta's helpfulness extended considerably beyond the professional. He turned then, not waiting for an answer, and reached for the bottle without looking at it, a second glass assembling itself on the desk beside the first.

"Now then." His eyes found Virgilia again.

"Since the boy has everything he needs... I have a rather exceptional vintage open, and at least half an hour before my next appointment." Virgilia glanced at the glass, then at him, with the measured patience of someone weighing something they had already decided.

"Some things," she said, her crimson eyes carrying a quiet amusement that sat just slightly too still to be entirely human, "are best left unfinished, Vittorio... wouldn't you agree?" She turned toward the door before he could answer, and Alonso followed her out, the doors closing behind them with a sound like a full stop. As they exited, Alonso was received by a refined looking woman in a very professional attire, long blonde curls and a nose pointier than average.

"Maestro Ospite, may I guide you to your chambers?"

The office she led him to was modest compared to the Dean's suite... a small, neatly kept room with a desk, a mirror, and a window that looked out onto one of the inner courtyards below. Humble enough to be appropriate for someone newly arrived, refined enough to make the point that even 'humble' had standards here.

Before Alonso could say anything, Isabetta's eyes found the obsidian plate at the entrance of the office and held it for a moment, a faint pulse emanating from her gaze as the letters carved themselves in real time. Darius Ardighieri Maestro Ospite She stepped back, and motioned toward the inside with a composed smile. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"I will come to collect you here in forty five minutes for your lecture, Maestro. Feel free to enjoy the campus as you please until then." And with that she withdrew without another word. Alonso turned to find Virgilia leaning against the doorframe, the faintest grin on her face." What? Want me to help you change too?" Alonso shook his head." What should I even say in this lecture?"" Anything you like,"Virgilia said, her grin widening slightly."

Something deeply philosophical that sounds profound and means absolutely nothing tends to go down particularly well with this crowd." She pushed off the frame." The sole purpose of it is to get you a public position in the light while introducing Darius to Venettia's higher society, so don't give it much thought. There is no way to mess it up...

"a brief pause, her tone carrying just enough amusement to make it worse,"... unless you let your Domain slip. Which won't be an issue, I trust?"" No."" Wonderful." She waved a hand already walking away, not bothering to look back." I will be around, then. And just so you know, I have been assigned as your guide by The Shadow Court, so get used to seeing me rather often… Maestro." Alonso stared after her for a moment longer before his eyes dropped back to the chest with the attire and token.

He picked it up, set it on the desk, and closed the door behind him. He changed, and took a moment afterward to look at himself in the mirror. The fit was very elegant.

Dark, structured, the obsidian shoulder pad sitting cleanly on one side from where a black half cape fell toward his waist, giving it that cool asymmetric flair. He looked like some Venetian professor from a Renaissance fever dream, which was both accurate and faintly surreal. He had imagined something like this once, back on Earth as a PhD student... a lectureship, standing at the front of a room full of university students with something worth saying. It had been a quiet ambition of his.

He just hadn't anticipated the road to getting there would involve, well... lecturing on how to kill people. He smiled at his reflection, adjusted everything until it sat right over his battle gear underneath, slipped the identification token into his chest pocket the way he had seen the other professors wear theirs, and turned toward the door. After some quick thought he decided to just wander around without a destination.

He was quite interested in the setting of Venettia, which had, in all honesty, given him a hell of a first impression. He walked through the corridors at a steady pace, unhurried, taking small details in. Students that passed gave a respectful bow, their manners polished and refined. He caught a few whispers along the way.

"... Ardighieri, isn't that..."

"Related to the Dean?"

"... a new Maestro, apparently..." He smiled lightly as he went along, catching remarks here and there from ongoing lectures, some of which made him stop and listen for a moment, picking up whatever might be useful for the wording of his own... not that he was particularly anxious about it. Eventually he made it, somehow, to a large balcony overlooking the left wing's massive courtyard, where the physical part of the curriculum clearly took place.

The space below was enormous, open to the sky, the stone floor divided into dozens of marked arenas running simultaneously. In some, students circled each other with the focused patience of people who had been taught to think before they moved. In others, that patience had already run out. The duels were not gentle. Steel rang hard off steel, footwork cut sharp angles across the stone, and blood found its way to the floor with a regularity that suggested it was more or less expected.

A red-caped student caught a clean slash across the forearm that opened it to the bone, staggered, then reset her stance without so much as a sound. A moment later the wound began closing fast, healed completely before she had even finished moving. Alonso wondered whether that was a set effect or some form of Will-based skill. His gaze moved to the far end of the courtyard, where a different kind of exercise was underway.

Several lecturers stood at the edges of their arenas, eyes tracking their students with the calm focus of people managing a great many things at once. At the centre of each space, magnetised puppets moved... not clumsily, or predictably, but with a fluid, shifting intelligence driven by the lecturer's direct EM control, each one cycling through combinations and counters that adapted in real time to whatever the student threw at it. Alonso leaned against the railing and watched, genuinely absorbed by it all.

He heard footsteps a moment later, accompanied by the faint smell of good tobacco. A figure stopped beside him and leaned against the railing with the ease of someone settling into his usual spot. Short... and generously built in the horizontal direction, in a way that suggested he had made peace with that some time ago. Middle aged, lecturer's attire worn with comfortable looseness. A cigar of evident quality sat between two fingers, its smoke curling upward in a thin line.

His moustache was immaculate, trimmed to a precision that stood in cheerful contrast to everything else about him. He took a long, satisfied puff, exhaled slowly, and without looking over said:"Another Ardighieri, huh." A smile in his voice.

"The Dean really can't help himself, can he?" He turned and offered his hand.

"Marcello. A pleasure, Darius." Alonso shook it, noting the man's prompt quietly. Marcello Grimani Stage 1 – 54. 596% He had noticed the lecturers here ran high without exception, all above 49%, which put him, funnily enough, at the bottom of the staff roster.

"A pleasure," Alonso responded in perfect Venetian. Marcello smiled, his gaze drifting back to the courtyard below.

"I have a hunch you won't be sticking around for much."

"Perhaps your hunch is right," Alonso responded calmly. Marcello took a long, unhurried puff, exhaling slowly through his nose.

"I can see in your eyes your road is far from over. Usually this place is where people end up when it has." A brief pause, his eyes still on the courtyard.

"We all find our simple pleasures in the end... some of us cigars, some a good vintage, some..." he waved a hand loosely in the general direction of the Dean's corridor, "... pretty skirts. Whatever keeps an old man breathing with some enthusiasm between one morning and the next." Alonso smiled faintly.

"Smoke?" Marcello was already fishing a slim metal container from his inner coat pocket, flipping it open with practiced ease, several fine cigars lined up inside with the neat precision of a man who took at least one thing seriously. Alonso shook his head.

"Good for you," Marcello said, snapping it shut and tucking it away without a hint of disappointment, taking another long pull from the one already between his fingers. The silence sat for a while, both of them staring at the fights below with mild to little interest.

"You're gonna teach anything today?"

"Quite soon at that," Alonso said.

"Not that I am particularly looking forward to it."

"I get the feeling," Marcello continued, a comfortable puff following the words.

"Anyway, if you want to chat once in a while... I am usually here, now and then. Know some good places around the city too, worth seeing if you have the time."

"I will consider it," Alonso said, giving the arenas below one last glance before looking back at the man with a firm nod, and walking away. He kept his steps steady and casual down the corridor, a certain quiet glint in his eyes, as Houston had already flagged the man's subtle attempts at reading his profile during their exchange. He wasn't sure whether the man was an agent of The Way or some other organisation, but it was clear the waters in Venettia ran deep. He really couldn't afford to let his guard down.

Though he found the thought faintly amusing all the same. Hidden in plain sight beneath their noses... a bastard son, a Maestro, an assassin. Whatever came next… at least the script had taste.