Bella's revulsion magnifies at your explanation (and Queekish expectoration). Fortunately, you are not near enough to any of the mercenaries guards at the time to cause misunderstanding; and you are cleared to pass into the city proper with a few coins of gate toll Cestié pays himself.

Immediately on the way in you notice the signage - steady employment available to visitors and new citizens with a small price disparity. Gondoliers, mercenaries, and especially rat-catchers are in demand and with genuinely impressive wages and compensation. There is also a bid for laborers for the so called "Water Guild", which Cestié explains as a gondolier pushes you along a gently trafficked canal toward your destination.

"The river is salt, and there's no sinking a well, here - all you'd get is seawater and sand. Water has to be ported in from overland. I'm told ten or fifteen years ago, there was a kerfuffle with a certain merchant cornering the trade - I suppose they've created a guild to fill the gap he left after he was chased off. The Water Wizard, he called himself; though I doubt a real wizard."

You pass underneath many canal gates - raised portcullis mounted under the bridges over the canals. Beside most of them, you see barrels stuffed with nets, and twine with dozens of suspended little bronze bells; as well as the occasional mounted skaven head on the bridges above, near uniformed pairs of rat-catchers with typically one or two terriers between them. Alongside the canals, you notice that Leonardo's home town features dozens of his signature leaning towers, rather than one or two as a centrepiece for city architecture. There are many wonderful things to see in the city - Temples to Mymidia, Mathann, Mercopio; a great library devoted to Verena; the citadel with its dwarven runework gate; a small halfling district for an enclave of the wee folk; a huge and storied university, and school of medicine. But your destination is one of the middle-wealthier areas of the city: a great, big store with the kind of huge, painted billboard of frontage that makes it a landmark as much as a place of business. It reads, in tall letters of white over a huge black image of a padlock, "Signore Cestié's Fine Locks And Latches", and then smaller underneath but still easilly legible from halfway up the canal approaching it, "Quality Security Solutions For Storage, Doors, Windows, Coaches, and Miscellania."

When you and Signore Cestié (Bella Collina Edition) step onto the cobbles beside the canal and tip the gondolier on his way, the old man gazes up at the sign for a very long time, it seems. Bella touches his back with her hand, and invites you to do the same; and with a little fortification of these gestures, you head in through the door - a door with seven seperate latches and locks, all open presently - together.

Beyond is a kind of showroom with many chests, lockers, and standing wooden show-walls with great arrays of tiny hinged doors for the demonstration of their associated locks. A half dozen people peruse the showroom, attended by two young men and a young woman all doing their best to answer questions and upsell; monitored and aided at a short distance by a manager beyond his middle age, but young in comparison to another in the room. Behind the counter, finishing a customer's purchase of a wooden footlocker with a bright new iron lock, is a man about Maso's age, and about his build, and about his... well, about his everything. The shopkeeper is taller slightly, and has on a set of spectacles like Maso uses when reading. His glance and smile goes first to you as the tall oddity you are, then to Bella whom few gazes ever fail to go at some point, and then finally he almost chokes when his eyeline meets the man with you.

"Maso!", he says in instant recognition. "Maso, you're... here!"

"Franchino..." The prodigal Cestié breathes with a weak smile, rubbing his hand through his white hair as he does. "Yes - yes, well, we- the girls here and I were..."

"Papa?"

Franchino, Maso's sole older brother, clams up as everyone's eyes (even the customers!) track to the speaker. Past middle age, yes; more grey hair than the slate black it once was. A little thicker of build than Maso; shorter, but straighter of back with his relative youth - perhaps, in his fifties - leaving him a little taller. The shared features are as undeniable as they were on Franchino's face - though the look of surprise on this man's face is even more baffled... and hurt.

Maso swallows.

"Biagio - Biagio, how is this..."

A frozen, silent tension fills the shop for a second. Another. And one more.

And then Signore Maso Cestié animates with the spryness of a much younger man, turns, and bolts out the door.

Biagio is not as graceful as the old man. In his immediate, instinctive pursuit, he knocks over a standing wooden display of hinges and locks. "Wait! Wait! Papa! Hey!"

Franchino grimaces and raises his hands and voice to sooth the alarmed crowd - assuring that it's no trouble, just a surprise guest, and that the assistants in the shop will be happy to continue assisting - before he shuffles out from behind the counter and tries to grasp how best to arrest the chaotic situation that just walked in (and fled out) the front door.

Spoiler: OOC:
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To run, to stay, to ask questions, to task Bella - all these things lie before you. For clarity's sake, Signore Cestié may be "Maso" for a while!