Assassin's Creed: Unity (26 page)

“Go,” he called over. “Get to Mirabeau estate. I’ll deal with this.”

I nodded, and left, heading to see the Assassin Grand Master, Mirabeau.

v

It was getting dark by the time I reached Mirabeau’s villa. Getting there, the first thing to strike me was that scarcity of staff. The house had an odd, silent feel—a feel it took me a moment or so to recognize as how my own house had felt in the wake of Mother’s death.

The second thing to strike me—and of course I now know that the two were connected—was the strange behavior of Mirabeau’s butler. He had worn an odd expression, as though his features hadn’t quite settled on his face; that, and the fact that he didn’t accompany me to Mirabeau’s bedchamber. I thought back to my arrival at the Boars Head Inn on Fleet Street and realized that it would hardly be the first time someone had mistaken me for a lady of the night, but I didn’t think that even the sloppy-faced butler was
that
stupid.

No, there was something amiss. I drew my sword, came silently into the bedchamber. It was in darkness, the curtains drawn. Candles in a candelabra were close to guttering, a fire burned weakly in the grate; on a table was laid out the remnants of what looked like supper, and in the bed was what appeared to be a sleeping Mirabeau.

“Monsieur?” I said.

There was no reply, no response at all from Mirabeau, whose ample chest, which should have been rising and falling with his breathing, remained still.

I went over.

Of course. He was dead.

“Élise, what is this?” Arno’s voice from the door startled me, and I whirled around.

A sudden feeling of misplaced guilt welled up within me. “I found him like this. I don’t . . .”

He looked at me for a second longer than necessary. “Of course not. But I must report this to the Council. They’ll know . . .”

“No,” I snapped. “They don’t trust me as it is. I’ll be their suspect, first and last.”

“You’re right,” he said, nodding. “Of course you’re right.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We find out what happened,” he said decisively. He turned, studying the wood surround of the entryway just behind him.

“Doesn’t look like the door was forced,” he said.

“So the killer was expected?”

“A guest, perhaps? Or a servant?”

My mind went to the butler. But if the butler did it, then why was he still here? My guess was that the butler was working in a state of willful ignorance.

Something caught Arno’s eye, and he picked it up holding it close to inspect it. At first I took it to be a decorative pin, but he was holding it out, his face serious, something significant about it.

“What is that?” I said, but I knew what it was, of course. I’d been given one at my initiation.

vi

He handed it to me. “It’s . . . the weapon that killed your father.”

I took it to study, seeing the familiar insignia in the center of the design, then scrutinizing the pin itself. On it was a tiny gutter so that the poison would flow inside the blade, then exit from two tiny openings farther down. Ingenious. Deadly.

And of Templar design. Anybody finding it—one of Mirabeau’s Assassin compatriots, for example—would have assumed that the Grand Master had been murdered by a Templar.

Perhaps he would have even assumed that Mirabeau had been murdered by me.

“That’s a Templar badge of office,” I confirmed to Arno.

He nodded. “You saw no one else when you arrived?”

“Just the butler. He let me in, but he never came upstairs.”

He was searching the room now, his gaze moving across the bedchamber as though he was systematically studying each area. With a small exclamation he darted to a cabinet, knelt and reached beneath it, retrieving a wineglass flecked with dried dregs of wine inside.

He sniffed it. “Poison.” He recoiled.

“Let me see that,” I said, and held it to my nose.

Next I turned my attention to Mirabeau’s body, fingertips prying open his eyes to check the pupils, opening his mouth to inspect his tongue, pressing down on the skin.

“Aconite,” I said. “Hard to detect, unless you know what you’re looking for.”

“Popular with Templars, is it?”

“With anyone who wants to get away with murder,” I told him, ignoring the insinuation. “It’s almost impossible to detect, and the scent and the symptoms resemble natural causes. Useful when you need to get rid of someone without monitoring them.”

“And how would one go about acquiring it?”

“It grows easily enough in a garden, but for the symptoms to have come on so suddenly, it must have been processed.”

“Or purchased through an apothecary.”

“Templar poison, Templar pin . . . It looks damning.”

He shot me a significant look that earned him a frown in return. “Bravo, you figured it out,” I said witheringly. “My cunning plan was to murder the only Assassin who doesn’t want to see me dead, then stand about waiting to be discovered.”

“Not the only Assassin.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. But you know this wasn’t my doing.”

“I believe you. The rest of the Brotherhood, though . . .”

“Then let’s find the real killer before they get wind of this.”

vii

A curious turn of events. Arno had learned from an apothecary that the poison had been acquired by a man who wore Assassins’ robes. From there was a trail that Arno followed, and it had led us here, to Sainte-Chappelle on the Île de la Cité.

A storm was brewing by the time we reached the great church, in more ways than one. I could see that Arno was shaken by the idea that there might be a traitor within the Assassin ranks.

Better get used to it,
I thought.

“The trail ends here,” he said thoughtfully.

“Are you sure?”

He was looking up to where high in the turrets of the great church stood a dark figure. Silhouetted against the skyline, his cloak fluttered in the wind as he gazed down upon us.

“Yes, unfortunately,” he said ruefully. I readied myself to go into battle with him once again, but with a hand on mine Arno stopped me.

“No,” he said, “I must do this myself.”

I rounded on him. “Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not letting you do this alone.”

“Élise, please. After your father died, the Assassins . . . They gave me a purpose. Something to believe in. To see that betrayed . . . I need to make it right myself. I need to know why.”

I could understand. Better than anyone I could understand, and with a kiss I let him go.

“Come back to me,” I told him.

viii

I craned my neck to look up to the roof of the church, but saw just stone and the angry sky beyond. The figure had gone. Still I watched, until a few moments later when I saw two figures tussling on a ledge.

My hand went to my mouth. A cry for Arno, which would have been useless anyway, dried in my mouth. In the next instant the two figures were tumbling from the church, hurtling down the front of the building, almost shaded out by the driving rain.

For half a second I thought they were going to hit the ground and die there in front of me but their fall was stopped by an overhang farther down.

From my position below I heard their bodies make impact and their cries of pain. I wondered whether either of them would have survived the fall, then got my answer as they gathered themselves slowly and painfully and continued to fight, slow at first but with increasing ferocity, their hidden blades flashing like lightning strikes in the dark.

Now I could hear them shouting at one another, Arno crying, “For God’s sake, Bellec, the new age is upon us. Haven’t we grown past this endless conflict?”

Of course, it was Bellec, the Assassins’ second-in-command. So—he was the man behind Mirabeau’s killing.

“Did everything I teach you bounce off that armor-plated skull?” roared Bellec. “We are fighting for the freedom of the human soul. Leading the revolution against Templar tyranny.”

“Funny how short the road is from revolution against tyranny to indiscriminate murder, isn’t it?” roared Arno back.

“
Bah.
Stubborn little fuck, aren’t you?”

“Ask anyone,” retorted Arno, and he leapt forward, his blade making a figure of eight.

Bellec danced back. “Open your eyes,” he shouted. “If the Templars want peace, it’s only so they can get close enough to put the knife to your throat.”

“You’re wrong,” countered Arno.

“You haven’t seen what I have. I’ve seen Templars put entire villages to the sword, just for the chance of killing one Assassin. Tell me, boy, in your vast experience—what have you seen?”

“I’ve seen the Grand Master of the Templar Order take in a frightened orphan and raise him as his own son.”

“I had hopes for you,” screamed Bellec, seething now. “I thought you could think for yourself.”

“I can, Bellec. I just don’t think like you.”

The two of them, still grappling, were framed by a vast stained-glass window of the church. Lashed by the rain, lit and colored from behind, they scuffled for a second, as though teetering on some precipice, as though they might fall one way, off the balcony and down to the slick stone of the church courtyard below, or the other way and into the church itself.

Just a question of which way they were going to fall.

There was a crash, colored glass splintered, robes flapped and tore on shards of glass, then they fell once more, this time into the church. I dashed across the courtyard to a gate, pulling on it and seeing them inside.

“Arno,” I called. He stood and shook his head as though to try and clear it, spraying bits of broken glass on the stone floor of the church. Of Bellec there was no sign.

“I’m fine,” he called to me, hearing me rattle the gate as I tested it once more, trying to reach him. “Stay there.”

And before I could protest he took off and I strained my ears to hear as he ventured deep into the darkness of the church.

Next came the sound of Bellec’s voice coming from . . . where, I couldn’t see. But somewhere close.

“I should have left you to rot in the Bastille.” His voice was a whisper echoed by the damp stone. “Tell me, did you ever really believe in the Creed or were you a Templar-loving traitor from the start?”

He was taunting Arno. Taunting him from the shadows.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Bellec,” shouted Arno, looking around, squinting into the dark alcoves and recesses.

The reply came, and once more it was difficult to locate from where. The voice seemed to emanate from the church stone itself.

“You’re the one who’s making it so. If you just see sense, we could take the Brotherhood to a height we’ve not seen in two hundred years.”

Arno shook his head, voice dripping with irony. “Yes, killing everyone who disagrees with you is a brilliant way to start your rise from the ashes.”

I heard a noise ahead of me and saw Bellec a second before Arno did.

“Look out,” I cried as the older Assassin came lunging from the shadows with his hidden blade extended.

Arno turned, saw him and flipped to the side. He came to his feet ready to meet an attack and for a moment or so the two warriors stood facing each other. They were both bloodied and bruised from the battle, their robes tattered, almost shredded in places, but still full of fight. Each was determined that this should end here and it should end now.

From where he was, Bellec could see me at the gate and I felt his eyes on me before his gaze returned to Arno.

“So,” he began, his voice full of derision, ripe with scorn, “now we see the heart of it. It’s not Mirabeau who’s poisoned you. It’s
her
.”

Bellec had formed a bond with Arno but he had no idea of the bond that already existed between me and his pupil, and it was because of that that I didn’t doubt Arno.

“Bellec . . .”
warned Arno.

“Mirabeau is dead.
She
is the last piece of this lunacy. You’ll thank me for this one day.”

Did he mean to kill me? Or kill Arno? Or kill us both?

I didn’t know. All I knew was that the church rang to the sound of steel meeting steel as their hidden blades clashed once more and they danced around one another. What Mr. Weatherall had told me all those years ago was true: most sword fights are decided in the first few seconds of engagement. But these two combatants were not “most sword fighters.” They were trained Assassins. Master and pupil. And the fight continued, steel meeting steel, their robes swinging as they attacked and defended, slashed and parried, ducked and whirled; the fight carrying on until they were round-shouldered with exhaustion and Arno was able to summon hidden reserves of strength and prevail, defeating his foe with a cry of defiance and a final thrust of his hidden blade into his mentor’s stomach.

And Bellec at last sank to the stone of the church floor, his hands at his belly. His eyes went to Arno.

“Do it,” he implored, close to death now. “If you’ve got an ounce of conviction and aren’t just a love-addled milksop, you’ll kill me now. Because I won’t stop. I
will
kill her. To save the Brotherhood I’d see Paris burn.”

“I know,” said Arno, and delivered the
coup de grace
.

ix

Arno told me later what he had seen. He had seen something in a vision, he’d said, with a sideways look, as though to check I was taking him seriously.

In the vision Arno had seen two men, one in Assassin robes, the other a Templar thug, who were scuffling in the street. The Templar seemed to be triumphant but then a second Assassin entered the fray and killed the Templar.

The first Assassin was Charles Dorian, Arno’s father. The second was Bellec.

Bellec had saved his father’s life. From that incident Bellec had recognized the pocket watch and then, when in the Bastille, realized exactly who Arno was.

Another thing Arno had seen, a second vision: this one showing Mirabeau and Bellec talking, Mirabeau telling Bellec, “Élise de la Serre will be Grand Master one day. Having her in our debt would be a great boon.”

Bellec in reply saying, “Be a greater one to kill her before she is a real threat.”