Death in Versailles
Versailles, France.
27 December, 1776.
Templar Shay Patrick Cormac walked past the entrance gates of the Palace of Versailles. Alongside him was his old friend Benjamin Franklin. The man, as the United States of America's ambassador to France, had managed to get him inside the Palace for his mission, of which Franklin knew not about. Shay was looking for a particular object — a Precursor box, which had fallen into Assassin hands long ago.
As he walked, the Templar listened to his friend talking about their visit to Versailles. "Ah, Shay. You certainly look prepared to meet royalty! Perhaps King Louis himself will grant you an audience," Franklin praised his outfit. It might have been expensive, but he only cast one glance at the men and women reunited in the main courtyard, and he already knew his old friend was exaggerating. In any case, he wasn't here to meet with royalty. He was here to deal with an unfinished business. One which had taken far too long to settle.
"I doubt even these breeches will get me into the King's chambers," Shay replied. The breeches had been expensive, but it didn't seem enough for the Frenchmen he was seeing. "Besides, I'm only here to see a business acquaintance." Of sorts, he added in his mind. Benjamin Franklin knew nothing of the Assassin-Templar War, and he was determined to keep it that way.
The inventor stopped walking, and Shay followed his lead. "Yes, I heard a group of merchants would be here today. They might come to see my scientific demonstration later!" Indeed, it was obvious the man didn't know about the War. Or else he might have imagined the merchants weren't really merchants. At least not all of them. François de la Serre, a fellow Templar would be here, as well as Shay's target: Charles Dorian. An Assassin. Not that Franklin needed to know that.
"They really should, they might learn something." He couldn't help himself, and added, "Though I wouldn't count on their being present." They resumed walking, heading towards the grand entrance, from which was spread a large red carpet with golden borders. "I take my leave," Shay informed his friend. They should part here before things got messier. It was better this way, for everybody. "Thank you again, Master Franklin."
Now to find Charles… and that damned box.
The entrance to the palace was still open, and Shay walked quickly — yet without running, as to not attract any attention — in hopes to reach it before it could close. When he was close enough, he saw his target. That's him! Charles Dorian. The Assassin was talking with a French guard, explaining his visit, most likely. Next to him was a young boy, who could not have been more than ten.
His mission had just become more complicated: he had to find the box and kill Charles, when the man was alone. That meant without the boy, most likely his son, by his side. With a bit of luck, the Assassin would leave the boy behind for one moment, as he conducted business, and that would be when Shay would strike. But it was best not to count on something as fleeting and unreliable as "luck". No, Shay made his own luck.
The pair walked inside the palace as Shay made his way to a nearby crowd, where he was able to hide from the guards. There was no way he could get past them without Benjamin Franklin's help. He was on his own. He couldn't even cause a distraction that would enable him to slip past the guards: as soon as Charles and his son entered the Palace, the doors closed.
He would have to find another way.
Little Arno Victor Dorian followed his father through the fancy halls of the Palace of Versailles. A servant walked past them, in the other direction, holding a delicious-looking dead pig in a golden tray. Arno stopped, letting go of his father's hand in the process, and stared at the meal in wonder. It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before — he did come from a wealthy family, after all — but he was hungry, and the sight of the dead pig reminded him of that.
"Arno," his father called out with his warning tone. He was impatient to attend some important business, and his tone indicated he didn't want to be delayed by his child's wandering. The eight year old turned around, facing his father once more, and saw the man gesturing at him to follow, before turning around. Arno jogged to where his father was standing, next to an elegant red velvet chair, and sat on it.
"Can't I go with you, Father?" he asked. He didn't like these meetings, where he came because he had no option, but was forced to stay behind, waiting, because it was adults' business, and he wasn't allowed to know about it. Not yet, at least.
"Courage, my boy," Charles Dorian said, kneeling in front of his son. "You wait just here." He took out his dark pocket watch, and opened it for his son, showing him the inside of it. "I will return when this hand," the longer one, "reaches the top." Basically, he will only be absent for fifteen minutes. For the Assassin, that didn't seem like much, but for his son, it probably felt like an eternity.
After all, children have a different perception of time.
And indeed, this was confirmed with Arno's next words. "That's forever!"
"Not as long as all that," Charles reassured him. "And when I get back, we'll see the fireworks," he promised, standing up and walking away. He remembered something, and stopped in his tracks, turning around to give his son one last warning, "And Arno… no exploring, hm?" The tone was clear: no exceptions. The boy was to stay in the red velvet chair, and wait until the bigger hand of the pocket watch reached the top.
Which was forever.
But he agreed anyway. "Yes, Father."
As soon as the man was gone, Arno slid in his chair, slouching on it, and waited.
Shay Cormac quit his hiding spot, heading for another crowd, further away from the entrance. It was time to analyse the building, find an open door, or an open window. The Templar analysed the left side first, strolling past closed windows and busts placed against the red bricks of the Palace. He found nothing in the first section, but a couple of steps further, he found what he was looking for: a small balcony on the second storey with an open window.
He walked around bushes and shrubbery, which blocked his path, and once again, hid amongst different groups of people as he approached the balcony that would grand him entrance to the Palace of Versailles. There weren't any guards around, but he was well aware of the delicacy of this mission, and despite the urgent ticking of his inner clock, he did not want to risk it. He would be careful, and would be invisible to any guards that would happen to cross his way. Only one person would die on that day, and it would be Charles Dorian.
He arrived at the chosen place, under the target balcony, quickly enough.
After checking no one was looking at him, the forty-five year old man braced himself, and ran towards the wall. He used his feet to give himself impulse, and used the irregularities in the façade of the Palace to easily reach the balcony. As soon as Shay got a good grip on the black balustrade, and hoisted himself up. Despite his age, he remained quite agile, and got on the balcony with rapidity as well as fluidity.
The Templar entered the Palace through the open window, and closed it behind him. He was in a fancy room, where white, green and golden seemed to be the dominant colours. A couple was in the room, and seemed to be ignoring him at the moment. With quiet footsteps, which weren't heard thanks to the large green carpet that covered most of the floor, Shay made his way out of the room without being noticed, and set off in his search for Charles Dorian.
The wait lasted forever.
Arno did everything he could to appease his boredom: swing his legs, stare at the pocket watch, turn around and look at the portrait of the King hung above him (twice). Nothing worked. With a sigh, the boy turned around once more, to stare at the portrait for the third time — he was starting to learn every single line by heart — when he heard a mischievous laugh coming from down the corridor.
He noticed a young girl, who was around his age, wearing a fancy dress, hiding behind a podium for a statue. Even when she hid, Arno could see parts of her dress sticking out from behind the podium. Then, out of the blue, the girl left her hiding place and ran off, hiding behind another podium. Out of curiosity and desire to be relieved of his boredom, Arno stood up from his chair, ignoring his father's warnings.
As soon as he did, the girl ran out of the room — how could she run with that big dress on? — and the young boy found himself following her through the Palace. Whenever she was out of his sight, giggles and taunts of him being too slow led him to her position, and they continued the chase, doing their best to avoid running into other people, and for a moment, forgetting about the rest of the world.
Arno failed, running into a man carrying another elegant dead pig, and dropping the tray upon impact. The pig and some apples lay on the ground and another servant knelt to help the man Arno had run into. He insulted the boy, who just stood there for a moment, watching the two men picking up the mess, before he turned around and saw the young girl at the end of the room.
And the chase resumed.
Shay Cormac was not surprised upon noticing the guards present in nearly every room of the Palace of Versailles. He was lucky several nobles were there as well, and he used them as a disguise, going from the green arrival room to another, where he used crowds as covers, and successfully avoiding detection, before slipping to another room. This one was red, and larger than the other two. A guard patrolled the place, but there were too many people for him to be able to detect intruders properly. The Assassins had trained him far too well, and he blended easily wherever he went.
He entered another room.
This one was rather empty. There was a couple, looking for a private moment, and behind a dressing screen was a guard, admiring a painting. In fact, he was so busy looking at it, Shay had enough time to spot the open window, approach it quiet and carefully, and jump out of it.
The French weren't careful enough.
Below him was a courtyard, where stood a lonely guard. The Templar had told himself only Charles Dorian would die, but he couldn't complete his mission with that guard standing between him and the secret Assassin meeting occurring in the Palace. He would have to make an exception.
After jumping out the window, Shay landed on the guard. If the blade to the throat hadn't finished him off, the weight of the Templar's fall on him would have. Either way, the man was dead, quietly, and the former Assassin could finish his mission soon. His Eagle Vision told him: the secret meeting was nearby. His target would be dead soon.
Before he left the courtyard, he noticed Charles Dorian's child talking to Élise de la Serre, the daughter of François de la Serre, his fellow Templar. She was distracting the boy, and Shay silently thanked her for making his job easier.
He walked past them without sparing them a second glance.
Arno chased the girl to an orchard.
In the centre of it were delicious-looking apples, and his hunger returned. It was strange that no guard seemed to be around to guard them, Arno thought. Something so delicious was bound to get stolen by someone soon, if nobody came to guard them.
As if she were reading his mind, the girl — she was a redhead, he could see now, underneath her large headdress — giggled, and challenged him, "Bet you can't steal one!" She ran off immediately after that, and Arno couldn't help it: he accepted the challenge.
The boy walked over the two stone steps and entered the sheltered zone of the courtyard, where his feet walked over the chequered black and white floor. He approached the wooden table with a long red tablecloth, heading for the apples, which were atop of a small dark base.
The job was easy: reach out and take one of the apples. And he did it. At the last moment, he decided to get another one, for the redheaded girl. Of course, he didn't notice the guard returning to his post at the same time he picked up the second red fruit, and was startled upon hearing him bark orders directed at the boy himself.
Arno ran away immediately, and hid behind the big plants of the courtyard. His eyes scanned his surroundings quickly, looking for a hiding place, and he was successful: in a corner was a small blue tent, where he could hide until the guard went away. The boy ran towards it, and hid.
The guard didn't even come close to where he was hiding, and after a few moments of looking around him sighed and grumbled, returning to his post. Arno waited until he was sure the man was gone, before leaving his hiding place, and running towards a connecting courtyard, where the redheaded girl was waiting for him.
"Did you see their faces when we stole those apples?" she asked him, a smile on her face, as soon as he showed up. The two kids laughed at the memory — the first of many to come, or so he hoped.
"I'm Arno," the boy introduced himself.
"Élise," she replied, and he decided he liked her name.
To prevent the conversation from dying, Arno decided to explain why he was in in the King's Palace, and hoped she would tell him about her situation as well. "I'm here with my father."
"So am I. He has important business with the King," she elaborated.
Despite his efforts, the conversation was dying down. Arno didn't want that. He'd forgotten everything about how he was supposed to wait for his father. It will take forever, he thought. Let's have a bit of fun while I wait, he decided, and asked Élise, "What should we do now?"
Gasps and exclamations came from inside the Palace, and the redhead shushed him, bringing a finger to his lips, to make sure he would stay quiet. Arno looked at her finger, surprised at the gesture, and then back at her. "Listen!" Footsteps running in direction of the Palace. They must've found out about the apples. "Don't worry. They'll never think to look for us in here," she reassured him.
But Arno didn't feel so good about it. He didn't want Élise to get caught. Besides, she might have challenged him to steal one, but in the end he was the one who'd done it. The boy decided to turn himself in, and upon seeing two guards running in their general direction, he approached them and confessed, "It's my fault. I'm the one who took those apples."
But the guards ignored him, and ran inside the Palace.
Something else must've happened.
"Did you see those faces when we stole those apples?" Shay heard Élise asking Charles' son. Neither of the two noticed him walk past, and the Templar entered the Palace forgetting about them quickly. There were no guards in the first room, and in the second one, the two uniformed men were too busy overseeing a servant cleaning the floor to care about the man in a strange attire walking behind them. He reached a long corridor, and walked over two long red and golden carpets to reach his destination. At the other end of the hall was the man he was looking for: Charles Dorian.
The target was with other Assassins. It seemed Shay had arrived just in time to witness part of the secret meeting. The Templar approached a nearby crowd, next to a podium with a bust over it, and paid as much attention as he could to the Assassins.
"Gentlemen, I will protect this artefact with my very life," Charles promised, and Shay managed to catch a glimpse of the precursor box before the man slipped it into the inside of his jacket. It seemed he'd arrived just in time: Dorian had only recently acquired the object he'd been chasing for so long. The Templar let his target walk into the middle of the corridor, the Assassin having remained in the other room, and Shay approached his target as soon as he'd stopped moving. "Arno? Where have you gone?" the man called out for his son, upon finding the red velvet seat empty.
Ignoring the fact that he was going to leave a child orphan, he approached his target, and stabbed him with his hidden blade, right in the chest. "You!" Charles seemed to recognise him, and used his last strength to have a conversation with him rather than screaming for help. Good. "You're the traitor." Yes, that would be what the Assassins called him, but they shouldn't, really. After all, their Brotherhood had betrayed him first.
Shay sat the man on the red velvet chair, where he guessed Arno was supposed to be sitting. As soon as he retracted his hidden blade, Charles put his left hand over the wound and started applying pressure on it with as much strength as he could muster. The Templar knelt next to the dying man, and replied, "I'm just finishing old business." And it was about damn time.
"Old… Connor and his Assassins…" It was hard for Charles to breathe, let alone speak. Keeping his eyes on the rest of the room, Shay slipped a hand under the Assassin's coat and recovered the Precursor Box he'd been trying to find for years, and slipped it under his own coat. "The American Revolution undid your Templar business." That, however, was yet to be seen. Templars had the ability to adapt under any circumstance, and a little revolution across the pond wouldn't be the one to change that.
"Then perhaps we shall start a revolution of our own," Shay answered, his right hand over the man's shoulder. He stood up and left with those words, not noticing how the Assassin struggled to stand, and approached another man, before collapsing, finally meeting his end. The Templar simply walked straight ahead, ignoring the gasps and screams of fright over seeing a man dying. He narrowly missed the two guard running to see what the commotion was all about.
He had dealt with his unfinished business, and now it was time to go.
"Let's see where they're going!" Élise exclaimed, an excited look on her face. She started dragging Arno by the arm, before letting him go and running even faster. The boy wasn't about to miss out on some excitement, and followed her into the Palace of Versailles.
He was led to the corridor where he was supposed to be waiting for his father — he remembered the archway, and the chandelier on the ceiling, as well as the podiums with their busts and statues. It reminded him of his father, and the boy checked the pocket watch, only to find out the bigger hand had already passed the top of the watch, and was now somewhere on the right side of it.
He was late.
"Father?" Arno asked. Upon hearing no reply, he repeated the question, uncertainty and fear now filling his voice. "Father?" Again, no answer. He decided to approach the worried and horrified crowd, and find out what was happening. He walked past all of them, until he finally found out what it was all about: a man was lying in the middle of the corridor, eyes unmoving and staring at the ceiling. He wasn't breathing, or moving, and he showed absolutely no signs of life. But it wasn't just any man.
It was his father.
At first, Arno couldn't understand what he was seeing, but slowly, surely, the facts were absorbed, and processed, and he was left numb, in shock. He was so overwhelmed with feelings he didn't even know how he should feel or how he should react. What he did know, was that it was wrong, it was all wrong. His father shouldn't be lying motionless — dead — over the red carpet of a random corridor in the Palace of Versailles. He should be waiting for him, scolding him because of his tardiness, but in the end take him to see the fireworks, as he'd promised.
Instead, he was lying there, dead. There would be no scoldings, no fireworks. Arno knew he wouldn't see him again, or hear his voice, his warning tone, his scolding tone, his affective tone. He would hear nothing more from him, and now would only have the memories of his father to remember him. But he didn't want memories. He wanted his father.
The reality of it, the harshness of it all was impossible for him to bear at that moment, and it manifested in one simple motion: he let go of his father's pocket watch. The object fell to the ground, clattering, and sparks flew out of the now-broken watch, the only thing he had left of his father.
Further away, Shay Patrick Cormac, the Assassin-turned-Templar, was now leaving the Palace of Versailles, after finishing an old business. And as he walked, he brought with him a simple reminder of everything he had lived and done until then. It was the steady rhythm of the rectangular shape of the Precursor Box hitting his chest.