'My, my,' she noted idly, sitting back in her rocking armchair and glancing up at the young man taking up the whole of the door frame of her room. 'You look dressed to kill.'

'You like this?' he grinned, taking a step within the room and turning around, his arms held out to the sides to show off his latest outfit: a velvet and leather concoction, soft and yet dangerous-looking, its bottom not cut evenly at all but instead sharpened like the tail feathers of a hawk, the grey cape lending a wingspan aspect to the ensemble with the fancy metal shoulder pad on the left completing the lethal line from the tips of the gauntleted hand up to the elbow, the strange relic of the past of the society he belonged to, was born into: the Hidden Blade of the Assassin Order.

'I do, boss,' she complimented him sincerely, setting aside her book, and standing up. 'So who's on the menu at the fancy Rook establishment today? Some aristo who's put his foot or other body part where it shouldn't be?' she asked with soft irony, her brown eyes taking on an aroused gleam of barely repressed ferocity. She liked adventure, she liked the excitement of the Rooks, the sneaking, the intel gathering, the ferreting out of opposition and the foiling of their plans. Her life in London made her feel alive in ways she hadn't felt since her time in the Russian Assassin Brotherhood before the betrayal.

'Not exactly,' he replied, the mirth dying off as his face took on a rather stony statue-like expression: anger, never far below the surface of his sarcastic persona, tight-lipped, flinty-eyed, the hawk-like nose only adding to the immediate impression of a raptor about to snatch at its prey, whoever or whatever that happened to be.

'Well, don't look at me,' she told him, walking over to a table on which she'd placed the stand with her own Assassin gauntlet, the claws newly polished and oiled. 'I ain't done nothin wrong,' she finished in a nasal London drawl with that ever present Russian accent.

'No, you haven't,' he agreed in a gentle tone, watching her preparations without really registering them. 'But Lord Braddock has.'

'Oh? Do tell,' she encouraged him, gauntlet and overcoat in place, hood folded somewhat carelessly at the back. Not that she really cared. Appearances had ceased to matter to her in the last two years she'd spent here in London where one's clothes did apparently make the man or woman, marking them out for the others to see and judge their social and economic status. That she and her boss dressed with a certain carelessness of manner would have seemed rebellious to the upper classes whose noses were so far up in the air they couldn't see their own muddied shoes.

'He has been campaigning for the prohibition and closure of brothels in London.'

'Well, that's a lost cause,' she remarked with a derisive sneer. 'Men of whatever station in life can't seem to keep their cocks in their pants. Talk about equality.' Her tone conveyed her opinion of male weakness quite fully: she despised the breed and that wasn't only because of her own experience.

'Maybe the cause isn't as lost as you think,' he demurred, his lips twitching into an ironic moue of their own. 'He runs a brothel in Aldwych.'

'Westminster?' she asked, recalling the map of London she'd studied as part of her self-imposed Rook education. If she was going to run around the town with the gang, she figured she'd better get to know the boroughs, the streets, the geography. Otherwise she'd be bound to get lost somewhere. 'From the look on your face I assume it's a less than legally run operation.' There were bylaws and regulations that governed the London sex industry. When they were enforced, the women, the madames, who ran the establishments were more than happy to follow along and keep any illegal activities to a minimum. Since these laws were not enforced that much, all sorts of abuses had cropped up, not the least the illicit brothels often ran from the so-called 'gentlemens' clubs by these same 'gentlemen', members of Parliament, nobles in the House of Lords, who on one hand condemned the misuse of the laws they themselves had voted on and on the other dipped their pristinely clean white gloved fingers into the dirty morass of the immoral. As far as Olga was concerned, they were all of a feather: hypocrites all.

'Yes, it is,' he confirmed with a sharp nod. 'I was planning on paying a visit.'

'I had no idea you had those kinds of urges, my lord,' she quipped, unable to stop herself, and had the secret satisfaction of watching red creep up his cheeks, sideburns clearly having been trimmed this morning. When it came to sex, her friend Jacob Frye was as innocent as a baby girl. He didn't even seem interested in the activity and she didn't blame him: there were way more exciting things going on in London than mere sex. Like sex trafficking for instance which it seemed this Lord Braddock was engaged in.

'I thought I'd invite you,' he said, choosing to ignore that last comment. 'This is something close to heart for you, after all.'

'Oh thanks,' she said sarcastically, shaking her head. 'Like I needed that reminder.' She walked past him to the door. 'You have a carriage, I presume, my lord?' she asked with humorous but cutting irony, looking over her shoulder at him. 'In all that finery I doubt you'd want to walk all the way there.'

'After you, miss,' he invited her to go first down the stairs and out to the growler he'd 'borrowed' from a lord's stables. He fully intended to return the coach once this business was done but he had taken the precaution of concealing the coat of arms on the doors with black paint to match the coach's exterior. This in itself wasn't so unusual a practice: some 'gentlemen' didn't want to be recognized when they frequented a certain 'club'.

'You drive,' he told her with a smug smirk as he got into the carriage and shut the door. 'After all it wouldn't do for a lord to drive himself, would it?'

Her answering smile was all teeth. The cheek! Who did he think he was? She'd get him for this, somehow. She'd have to think of something particularly nasty.

'Oh no indeed, m'lord,' she agreed, half bowing in mockery. 'We wouldn't want my lord's anatomy to suffer terribly, now would we?' With a loud cackle at the renewed expression of that repressed British sexuality on her dear friend's face, she leapt onto the driver's seat. 'Aldwych is a big place, m'lord. I'd need a name to drive you to.'

'I'm meeting Fair Rosamund tonight, driver, so get on it,' came the half-growled instruction from inside the coach.

'And how exactly were you planning on getting in?' she asked him some time later as they stood in the shadows in an alley across from the brightly lit brothel called Fair Rosamund, paying homage to King Henry II's mistress of old. A rather obvious name for a noble's private bordello, giving away his intentions and his station in life. Lord Braddock apparently wasn't known for his subtlety.

And neither was the Assassin, who after snarling at her to 'watch and learn', stepped out of the shadows, swaggering across the road which was mostly empty of carriages of any kind by this point of the autumn night.

'Oh, of course,' she muttered under her breath, sighing in annoyed resignation. Her boss never changed. 'The front door. How stupid of me to assume anything else!' She shook her head, arms on her chest, her gleaming eyes following his swaggering back as he disappeared inside. 'I guess I'm to go around the back, then.' Such had been their less than spoken agreement, the plan formed by mutual consent without much in the way of talking: that was how well they'd come to understand each other, almost like a brother/sister duo which neither had truly had before, Evie notwithstanding since she and Jacob had drifted apart somewhat, their views on what was to be done in and about London Templars and Assassins diverging with her wanting to continue their father's work and him being more interested in poking holes in the Templar firmament and blowing the whole damn structure to kingdom come. Olga, being an outsider, could see both perspectives and even agree with them: yes, it was important to keep the Pieces of Eden out of Templar hands but also equally important to keep their enemies busy enough putting out fires that Jacob started in order for the less obvious work to continue. Without either of their contributions, London would not have been reclaimed for the Assassins. And yet…. Both siblings were so damned stubborn! Sometimes it made Olga's teeth itch: she was driven at times to knock their fool heads together and beat some sense into them - since Henry Green seemed to be incapable, soft spoken scholar that he was. He had no killer instinct, he preferred books to blades. Well, the saying did go 'the pen is mightier than the sword', didn't it?

'Not tonight it ain't,' she groused, making her way around the brick-sided wooden building to avoid being seen by any police or other gang spies. She wasn't interested in unnecessary fighting today. She simply wanted to help her boss extricate the girls who were not all voluntarily working at the Fair Rosamund if his intelligence was any indication. Apparently, some of these girls had been brought in as exotics: black slave girls, Indian girls, even Eastern European ones - this melange reminded her more of a Turkish harem than an English brothel. But then, had the Brits not made a superficial acquaintance of the less savoury practices of the East in their empire-building? And were rich lords like Braddock not at the forefront of the cultural appropriation and exploitation of these customs for their own pleasures? 'Когда больше денег чем мозгов….' A low groan of weary and contemptuous acceptance escaped her as she looked up the brick wall of the building directly behind the brothel - a pub of all things, a gentlemen's pub and hence well built with few handholds at least on this side. 'But then I don't need handholds, do I?' she thought, looking at the rope launcher now attached to her gauntlet. Given that London did have surfaces like this with almost no way to climb them and wide as a field boulevards, the grapnel hook made sense to adopt as her own too. Now it jerked her off her feet and delivered her seconds later to grasp the edge of the metal roof which she pulled herself up on to. Exhaling sharply, she glanced at the surrounding roofs, metal and tile covered, the better part of town which could afford proper cover and walling and floors. She spat, just to show her Russian derision for illicit wealth, and then walked across the roof, slightly damp after the recent rain (oh that damned London rain and FOG! Whoever had heard of this much fog in a city?), her boots crunching on the dusty metal, empty of any birds or cats or any life - in Aldwych the wealthy clearly didn't like vermin of any kind. 'Паразиты вы все до одного,' she whispered in disdain wishing for a split moment that she could literally piss on them all by wetting this roof but there was a better way: to take their 'toys' away from them and watch the spoiled brats of nobility howl about justice and fairness which they knew not a damn thing about, gold-tinted and blood-stained glasses on their faces preventing them from seeing anything below their noses.

The bordello was well-built and maintained. Marble covered the outside walls and there was a verandah of sorts on the roof, one that surrounded a summer garden which now didn't look so pretty given that it was October and most of the leaves had browned and fallen off to be swept up carefully by the gardener employed by Lord Braddock, who paid all the staff of the brothel, even the madam who managed it. It was his own little private harem where he invited friends and business partners to discuss business unfinished at the pub next door or to be convinced of the wisdom of following his 'suggestions' if the man proved to be recalcitrant. A nice little venture he had here, she thought, walking along the stone path, laid out in squared tiles, each three feet wide and clean. The access to the interior of the whorehouse - since that's all this was, a glorified whorehouse at the end of the day - was located in the corner opposite where she came from, inside a booth that contained a staircase which led down to a landing from which a smaller locked passage led to the gardener's quarters and storage and the larger grander passage led to the top floor dining room which was a restaurant served by a kitchen staff in starched white shirts and black pressed pants, white towels slung over their folded forearms, silver trays held at the tops of the fingers of the other hand, with all the air of officious servants of a rich man. Passing by the large dining room with many round tables and white tablecloths arranged in orderly rows, she glanced in to see if anyone was there: diners were sitting scattered here and there, nothing terribly busy, drinking and eating through their multicourse meals, some of the women definitely the high class whores who 'softened' up their customers before taking them to the bedrooms - or boudoirs as they were called in the quaint French manner to hide the reality of what really happened behind their closed doors inside the scented beds - to be 'serviced'. She sniffed to herself: she'd never had a high opinion of a woman who sold her body for money. As far as she was concerned, there was always another option but in a panic a woman didn't think rationally and acted on impulse. 'Rather like a certain young man I know,' she smirked, listening for any flashy noises or disturbance from downstairs. 'Что-то не слышно ничего… Джекоб, голубчик, что ты вытворяешь?'

Lord Braddock, busy within the corseted bosom of the young 'lady' in his lap, looked up from her charms only when the chair on the opposite side of the well-made oaken table was occupied by a smug-faced young man of about twenty-twenty three years of age, broad of shoulder and with the insolent manner of an expert pugilist, the facial scars on his brow and cheek evidence enough of that.

'Lord Braddock, I presume,' the impudent rascal spoke in a tone that was less a brazen question than an equally brash statement of fact. His finely-featured face was drawn into a rather insulting sneer that managed to convey how much more superior this gutter rat thought himself to be - despite his fine dress which was chosen with more taste than even a truly noble-born man could achieve. His hat, the red silk around it impeccable in its slightly negligent folds of a self-assured man, had not been taken off at all as it should have been in the presence of a Member of Parliament. The open long coat, red soft velvet and dark sturdy leather, the metal-gilded belt, the dark blue waistcoat, its lapels folded and pressed, even the grey trousers with not a hint of dirt on them, the long boots covered with leather gaiters - all proclaimed money, fashion sense, and a certain disdain for rules of gentility. Lord Braddock could feel a dark corner of his soul squirming in envy at this upstart's appearance.

'I do not believe I have had the pleasure of meeting you here before,' he said, temporizing, the young woman in his lap playing with his black lapel, smiling abstractedly.

'I'm new,' was the deep burr of a reply, the lips pulled back in a smile that managed to be insultingly polite. He must be quite the master of conversation and persuasion, the MP guessed. Or fancied himself to be so.

'Permit me to welcome you to Fair Rosamund,' he said, deliberately choosing one of the many meanings that the newcomer's words could be taken to have. 'What business brings you to seek me out?' He didn't bother to add a title, not even 'mister', not for this gallingly audacious scoundrel.

'I was told that you have the means to show a man of means a good time, Lord Braddock.' Still that same sardonic note coupled with the wry twist of the mouth. Was he laughing at him, an MP, and not even attempting to conceal it?

'You are well-informed,' the lord replied, smoothing the stylishly thin line of his moustache. He had been an officer in the imperial army and although he'd been involuntarily 'retired' at a fairly young age of thirty five, he had decided to keep up the physical affectation of the facial hair which had always distinguished the officer corps of nobles from the shaggy ugliness of the sideburns of the common soldier. Nonetheless, if he were truly honest, the pugilistic self-assured cockerel facing him now carried the sideburns well, clearly taking care of at least that part of his person.

'I have my sources, Lord Braddock,' the interloper said in that thinly veiled contemptuous ring that appeared to be his habitual manner of speaking.

'A man of means surely needs them,' the noble noted, his words equally of multiple significance and easily misunderstood.

'I am certain that few secrets leave this edifice,' the young man with the air of indolent superiority remarked easily, one elbow hooked on the back of the chair, his other hand, gloved as was proper, carelessly resting on the polished table.

'You are correct,' the MP replied, playing the game of polite beating about the bush while attempting with difficulty not to stare at that contraption on the left forearm: what the devil was it? A glove? A bracer? He'd never seen anything like it. Gold and black leather combined with a metal plate on the front and a syringe with a green liquid inserted into the bed attached to that metal plate. Apparently the business which he'd not been told about yet was 'delicate'. 'I presume you have some secret affair.' He didn't quite make it into an inquiry.

'I do have an affair, yes,' the young pugilist admitted with a self-derisive sniff. 'But it's not a secret.' He leaned forward as if towards a co-conspirator. 'I have a warning for you, Lord Braddock.' His voice had deepened, his eyes taking on a stony glint of significance.

'A warning?' The MP sat up, frowning and disregarding the woman in his lap who made a moue of disappointment. 'Of what?' He was puzzled: what was the man on about?

'Your scheme is about to go belly up, Braddock,' was the cheerful reply of the self-assured thug across from him, his fine features twisted in not-so-secret hilarity. 'Your jig's up.' The new-comer stood up with great deliberation, his mouth curving into a grin filled with mischief. 'I'm taking over.'

Lord Braddock stared up at him, open-mouthed. Was the man insane? Taking over? What?

'You….'

'No, no,' he was stopped with a hand on his chest, a hand that held the revolver directly over his heart, the cold metal pressing into the soft fabric of his shirt and waistcoat and the flesh beneath. 'No sudden moves, Braddock, no stupidity please.' The voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. 'Let's settle this like gentlemen.' The last word spoke volumes about his feelings towards the noble class as a whole and this representative of the same in particular.

'Snake!' whispered the nobleman while the prostitute who'd been sitting with such ease on his lap now stood as far away as possible, eyes glinting with interest, the private room inaccessible from the main parlour due to the closed and it seemed locked door. She had tried the handle and found it unyielding. Not that she was too worried: she liked the look of the young rascal - she could smell the adventurous and lively miasma rolling off him in waves. He was fun! He carried that, delight and death in a heady combination which was highly attractive to many women and he appeared to not be cognizant of it one bit.

'Oh that's where you're wrong, m'lord!' was the cheerful whisper of the street-wise villain, the revolver not moving an inch from the nobleman's panting chest. Reaching into an inside pocket of his red velvet coat, the sneering rogue drew out a black chess piece: a castle. Never taking his eyes off the lord's, the scar-faced criminal held it up between them. 'I assume you know what this is.' His tone was nonchalant belying the deep fire of his eyes: he'd kill the lord as soon as let him go. It mattered little to him really. Lord Braddock understood that quite clearly: he'd been in business for a long time now. He was a gambler even as a chess player. He made bold moves that stunned his opponents. He recognized an equal when he saw him. And this street rat dressed up as a high class dandy… Well, he'd just been outplayed.

'A rook,' his lordship grated between tight lips.

'Precisely,' was the barbed agreement of the other. 'And what exactly does a rook do, eh?' he inquired with all the air of a master teacher testing his pupil.

'It protects,' responded the former owner of this bordello for such he now knew himself to be. He could already hear it in his own voice, curse him!

'Capital,' the gunslinging rascal congratulated him. 'It does indeed protect. And I am protecting the girls who were working for you.' Neither the lord nor the prostitute failed to note the slight emphasis on 'were'. 'Are we agreed?'

With the revolver still held to his chest, what could he do but acquiesce?

'Alright, ladies, move out,' she chivvied them along. 'But quietly, please,' she added as voices started to rise in questions. They were a bit confused and bemused: they'd spent so much time in the basement of this tenement that they'd lost all hope. She'd found them by accident, more of a momentary impulse, in her exploration of the brothel. Some of the girls were occupied with clients, not all of them nice men. She'd passed them by: she could do little for them just now. The empty rooms however did speak of more girls available that were not there with the nobles. Where could they be? Obviously somewhere out of sight and out of mind: like a basement from which they could be brought out into the light since the underground 'quarters' were anything but lit. These women lived in darkness, almost complete except for a single candle when they'd gather in a 'common area' to be chosen as 'entertainment' for the evening.

'Why are you helping us?' asked a black-skinned woman clearly of African origin, her large eyes blinking in the light of the London streetlamp.

'Because I'd like to thumb my nose at Lord Braddock,' was the glib reply of the strange woman in man's dress who looked out of the alley that ran beside the seamstress's shop into which the tunnel she'd found in the bordello led. Why was there a tunnel into a seamstress's shop? She'd wondered about that until she saw the style of dresses that the shop stocked in its back room: the low cut shoulder-less trappings in a variety of cloth and fabric all designed to be easy to remove from the exotic courtesans. Apparently to be seen with such dresses on one's arm was less than frowned upon in 'polite' society. No self-respecting woman or gentleman would be seen with such on the street. Behind closed doors, however, or in a dark basement or a tunnel - that was just capital!

The street outside the seamstress's shop appeared to be deserted. Only an occasional desultory passerby walked slowly along the sidewalk opposite, head down, hat low on his brow. A tired worker on his way home or a swaying drunk. The lamppost near the door and window display did present a problem - as did the night patrol: two coppers in those egg-shaped hats and blue half-cloaks that reached the small of their backs. Olga pursed her lips, her brown eyes tracking them until they disappeared around the corner and she could breathe easier: what would they have done if a gaggle of prostitutes had emerged from this shop at this hour of the night? She could well imagine their stunned faces, probably turning red like Jacob's.

'It's safer now,' she whispered to the ladies clustered in the dark at the back of the shop. 'The train station's just the other side of that row of buildings. If we cross quickly, we should reach the train without being seen.' Her boss had had his train waiting ready to steam off into the night as soon as the ladies were aboard, whether or not he was there too. She'd not argued with that 'silent' order but had shrugged and sighed in exasperation. Jacob bloody immortal Frye would get all the glory and what would that leave for her? 'To be the conductor of loose ladies,' she'd snorted under her breath in a low semi-intelligent growl which had in turn elicited the earlier question of why she was aiding these 'pretty birdies' of the London night.

The Charing Cross station was empty at this time of night except for sleeping drunks and opium addicts, ragged beggars - solitary tired-looking men with the depressed faces of the hopeless or women in torn clothes of the working poor, children at their sides, asking for coins which Olga put into their dirty hands, sending them on to the Russian bath-house to get a wash and a clean set of clothes, watching them with sad and resigned eyes: they would be back here eventually. London's poverty problem was insoluble - not because there were no means but because there was no will. Politicians and capitalists didn't care if there were starving kids on the streets. What mattered was wealth and a stuffed belly.

'And may you choke on it,' she muttered, pushing past a company of well-dressed gents clearly full of drink and spite, their eyes shining with that glazed look of men who'd had too good a time out on the town and now waited for the last train home.

'Hey!' one of the inebriated gents objected loudly, his eyes hardly able to focus on the lamp post near the ticket booth let alone the company of women. 'Watch it!'

Olga snorted and didn't even turn around, not for this silliness of a drunken idiot. The company of ladies with her shied away from the quartet of men in black coats and black top hat, polished shoes and canes hanging off their elbows. They'd learned that men in their cups were capable of stupidity, some violent, some plain funny. This gang looked like trouble: wealthy men made for troublesome customers. Better to keep their mouths shut and stay away. Causing a fracas now would not serve them well: it just might bring the police down on them, a complication they did not want or need.

'Oi!' shouted the same man now taking a step towards them, swaying with the scotch he'd had. 'I'm talking to you!' He reached out a rather unsteady hand to grab the shoulder of the last woman who swatted it aside with the professional ease of a prostitute who'd seen it all before. She even kicked his ankle for good measure with her heeled shoe. He howled and let her go to the sound of laughter of his comrades, mocking him for his unsuccessful and ill-conceived trick.

'You're wrong, sir,' spoke an accented voice as a shadow fell on him. 'You're not talking to me.' She grabbed his chin and glared into his dazed and confused eyes. 'In fact I ain't here. Not at all.' Her smile was all teeth, a knife flashing in her other hand, the well-sharpened edge resting against his windpipe. 'I am a ghost, a figment of your imagination.' Her grip on his chin strengthened, holding his spine at a bent angle, his body rocking with the sudden unbalancing. He dared not blink, the primitive part of his brain telling him to not move a muscle. 'Got it?' He would have nodded had he been able to but she seemed to read his answer in his eyes and tilted her head, releasing him with a disdainful gesture of her hand, the knife disappearing into its sheath on her waist as if it hadn't been visible at all.

Olga, sniffing, rewarded his pals with a scorchingly scathing glance and like a good shepherd waved the ladies on. They'd made a lot of noise now quite honestly. Perhaps she should have taken the secret passage onto the platform. Oh well… these fools were so drunk they'd forget her and her charges in five minutes tops. Or so she hoped. You never knew what a drunk remembered the morning after - and that was the spice of life.

The metallic locomotive that pulled the train hideout shone red and gold in the lamps of the platform, puffing and hissing like some sleeping dragon, clouds of steam coming out of the sides and the stack at the front, the round door to the furnace polished until one could use it for a mirror. The train cars, newly painted and updated within, waited to receive their passengers who gasped and whispered to each other at the piles of books and papers, weapons and tables, a bar counter with bottles secured behind it in the cabinet. There was a wardrobe car with mostly masculine outfits and unmade bed - a sleeping chamber of sorts for Jacob Frye, whom they'd not had the pleasure of meeting yet.

'Draw the blinds, ladies, while I talk to the driver,' the diminutive woman suggested in the tone that was more of an order. 'You're taking a trip out of town courtesy of my employer.' Her lips twisted into a sardonic smile: she rarely could say anything without irony, her favourite method of putting people at ease or egging them on.

'Out of town?'

'Your employer?'

The questions came fast and she let out another irritated sigh. Could anyone ever just do what they were told without all this interrogation?

'Ladies, your questions will be answered,' she said placatingly, hand up, palm out. 'Just not now.' She glanced out of the sitting room car window. 'I do need to go back for the boss.' She chuckled, half in humour, half in resignation. 'Otherwise he'd dock my pay.' The women stared at her and then smiled: they knew well the very common practice of taking money off a worker for dereliction of duty whether perceived or real. It'd happened to them on a sporadic basis: at times the madam in charge of the Fair Rosamund would cut their wages if their dresses were not clean enough or they'd put on more weight or worse had become pregnant through not taking the herbs which she sold to them - as she did the dresses and the food. They'd pay for everything that they needed for the job, thus giving money right back into the pocket of the rich lord who truly owned the place. They were like slaves, like prisoners - free to fret and rot as they wished with little or no way out. Until tonight. Until this mysterious woman and her employer, until they'd found themselves here on this train going into the unknown, into the future. It was a frightening but stimulating prospect: the future which they had dared not dream of even now seemed within their grasp. What would they do with it? What would they do tomorrow, the day after, next week, next month? They didn't know. Yet. Nonetheless, as they gazed at one another while the train took off from the station, they all came to the same inescapable conclusion: tomorrow was going to be better because they were free, liberated. They had choices to make, decisions to ponder. And that was FUN!

Neither the Royal Guard, nor the cleaning staff who'd found him there could ever explain how Lord Braddock had ended up in the Speaker's Chair in the House of Commons, tied and dressed up as a trollop with a garishly painted face and a poxy bird painted large on his forehead which after much discussion was judged to be one of that nefarious breed of city corvids, a rook. Whose cruel joke this entire charade, this merry spectacle of an officer turned politician put upon such insultingly incongruous display within the hallowed halls of power was never discovered although the best of the Scotland Yard were engaged, even Sergeant about to become Inspector Abberline who had taken one look at the red-faced and angry Lord Braddock and knew at once who must be responsible. Only one man in the whole of London, nay, the EMPIRE, would even THINK let alone DARE to do such a thing as drag a brothel-owning hypocrite Braddock to the very place he'd considered sacrosanct, inviolate and play this macabre travesty of a comedy. While he found it hard to keep a straight face as he listened to the invective against the unknown assailant who'd made the arrogant and self important MP wear a harlot's costume to demonstrate to all his real feelings and actions on the bill that would dispense with a lucrative scheme of a stream of business, he also could not help but feel angry at the leader of the Rooks: once again the grand display, once again damn the consequences, once again tongue in cheek. Frye would never ever change even on his deathbed or with a noose around his neck. An irrepressible incorrigible reprobate who'd decided to shatter the peace of his life and London's with his theatrical antics and splashy adventures. Life was never boring with Jacob Frye around - and there were times when Abberline resented him for it, for making mockery of law, of the sergeant's life and beliefs, for going through life without much regard for the mess in his wake, for just being… Jacob bloody Frye!

'I want him found!' fumed Lord Braddock, echoed by the police commissioner who was trying to soothe him like a little child. 'I want him DEAD!' the MP ground out from between trembling lips and screeching teeth pressed so tightly that the sound carried around the cavernous hall of Westminster Palace, his hands clawed, the manicured nails at least as ostentatious in their multiplicity of colours as his 'costume' for lack of a better word. 'He must be made to pay!'

'He will be caught,' the police commissioner said placatingly, nodding while in his mind he cursed the damned fool of MP for allowing himself to behave like a spoiled schoolboy who'd been whipped for some perceived offence. 'The Yard will bring him to justice, my lord, rest assured.'

The nobleman, humiliated, ashamed, furious, was breathing heavily like a bellows at a foundry or rather like a puffed up steam engine that was venting the white vapour - Abberline fancied he could see the smoke coming out of his ears and sparks of fire glittering in his eyes. With an irate jerky gesture he refused the proffered arm of a constable, shooing the man away with a raging snarl of incomprehensible invective which didn't need translating. All that day in fact he stalked his home from room to room, scaring the servants, upsetting his sister and irritating his younger brother who was rather pleased that his elder got his comeuppance for once. Ever since they'd been children on their father's estate, Julian Braddock had tormented his younger sibling: bugs in his tea, frogs in his pillows, spiders in his shirts, poison in his dog's water… the list of 'pranks' as Julian called them went on and on. Even when they were both grown men and serving in the army, even then Julian had made his life hell. He'd taken the coloneltsy which should have been his; he'd taken command of the artillery which was his younger brother's charge; he'd even downplayed the role his brother had played in rescuing Julian in the Indian jungle when a tiger had decided to attack them on their walk through the vegetative tangles. He'd always been hungry for glory and fame, was Julian Braddock. Well, he had fame now! His brother could barely suppress a smirk every time he'd see the now cleaned up older man wearing holes in the carpeting. In fact it was hard not to laugh outright: what he truly wanted to do was fall against the wall and howl his mirth to the ceiling. This was delicious! The press was all over his brother's bordello affair! The pubs and cafes were filled with merrymaking in honour of the embarrassment caused by an unknown assailant to his high and mightiness Lord Braddock, MP and general nuisance to his family. Perhaps he should seek out this character and reward him for teaching his brother a valuable lesson in humility. If only he could find his address….

'You…' A snort. 'You…' A helpless laugh. 'HA!' Leaning back in her chair she finally gave in to the incipient hilarity as she imagined the 'victim' from the lurid description given to her by the self-satisfied leader of a notorious gang, whose brown eyes were dancing merrily as he took in the effect his tale of nocturnal mischief and derring-do had on his companion in trouble.

'You almost had to have been there,' he added, about to shake his head and resume the late breakfast she'd provided him, another of those Russian dishes she was making now, usually for herself but sometimes shared with him if he happened to be in the vicinity. 'He was swearing blue murder.' A smirk as he chewed the Russian crepe filled with jam. 'Not that I could hear, mind you,' he added as an innocent afterthought, waving the fork.

'Turning a deaf ear, were you?' she chuckled, helping herself to a third crepe, this time dipping its pointed end in honey. 'The echoes must've been something.'

'Silent, actually.' A grin. 'Amazing what a wad of cloth in one's mouth can do.'

'Ah the invective of the facial expression then,' she surmised, nodding to herself. 'Much more expressive than any lexical dribble.'

'You'd know, you're the expert,' he teased, as ever unable to be serious but especially after a good night's work like he'd just done.

'In more than one tongue, dear sir,' she noted with a superior amusement of a learned scholar. She'd always liked books, study. Much like Evie, in fact. And yet that didn't turn him off with her as it did with Evie. Maybe because she didn't preach her knowledge at him, didn't use it to cut his soul to ribbons, to blame him for his 'mistakes'. It was… refreshing to realize that a bookish person didn't always have to be a snob.

'Ah yes, the Russian facility for creating new vocabulary on the spot,' he drawled, giving her a mockingly ironic roll of the eyes. 'If only one'd understand it.'

'One could always learn,' she remarked, knowing well his penchant for skipping the learning part and going straight for the jugular of the task at hand. 'If one had the attitude.' She paused, chewed, swallowed. 'And aptitude.'

'Is that so?' His voice had taken on a silky quality of warning - not a real one, more of a bantering friendly salvo.

'You have the aptitude, dear Jacob,' she said more seriously, looking him in the eye. 'It's the attitude that's missing.'

'Is it?' He sat back, arms folded, face twisting into a grimace of resignation: it'd been going so well, why did she have to spoil this morning?

'It is,' she repeated firmly, now also straightening up and gazing at him steadily. 'I was looking through some of the books Henry left behind.' She stood and went into her sitting room bringing back a rather old battered looking small book with a faded cover that must have been red at one point, in the centre was etched a formerly gold symbol of the Assassins. Silently she held it out to him.

'What's this?' he asked, taking it reluctantly and opening the crackling book. The frontispiece bore the name in bold black letters: 'Codex'.

'An old book,' she stated the obvious, watching him keenly as he turned the pages with a slightly bored expression on his face. He'd never been one for books: not because they were not useful but because they were stationary - you had to SIT to read one, unmoving for hours. He'd had too much pent up energy for that, no patience to sift through the words and ideas.

'I can see that,' he remarked with some annoyance, his eyes catching an illustration of a woman in hooded dress with the name 'Maria' under the portrait.

'This is one of the most fundamental Assassin texts of the last thousand years,' she informed him, pointing with a finger at the Codex. 'Written by Altair ibn La-Ahad, a Syrian Assassin at the time of the Third Crusade.'

His eyebrows rose. One hell of an old book. No wonder the language was so stiff: was it a reflection of the man himself or just the style of the time?

'What does this have to do with attitude?' he inquired, setting the closed book on the table close to his empty plate.

'He was like you, boss,' she said, settling into a storyteller's cadence, reminding him that her Slavic people were naturals at weaving narratives out of empty air. He would never forget that story she'd told the policemen on the bridge. 'You share more similarities with this man six centuries dead than you realize.'

'Oh? Was he a Rook?' Flippant tone. He'd not been one for grave conversations which ordinarily dwelt on the past, on regrets. He had none. At least he told himself so. Why pore over spilt milk anyway?

'He was an Eagle.' Something in her voice, in how she'd said the name of the bird, made him tense. 'The Eagle of the Assassins, their best blade, the best man for any job that his Master assigned him.'

'Sounds like a man I'd like to meet.' He tried to make light of it, his discomfort at where she was going with this growing. He thought he knew where this was heading and he didn't want to go there, not yet. He didn't want to grow up that fast.

'You do.' She surprised him. 'In the mirror.'

'What?' He was puzzled: what the bloody hell was she on about?

'Eagle Vision,' she said cryptically, eyes never leaving him.

'What of it?' Irritation colouring those three short words: her riddles were making his head hurt.

'It's an inherited trait,' was the unruffled reply of the Russian Assassin who had none of this ability but had read up on it. 'Certain families have it, descended from certain common ancestors.'

As the implications of her words began to sink in, Jacob's eyes widened, lighting up. 'Are you saying…?'

'He may be an ancestor,' she said with a shrug. 'You do seem to have shared personality traits.' Her lips curved in what could have been described as a motherly or sisterly smile. 'Courage. No fear of physical danger. Brazenness of manner. Shall I go on?' Amusement sprinkled that last question as she observed his features change from an annoyed schoolboy to one interested in the story.

'Many men may share personalities,' he shrugged all the same. 'That doesn't mean they're related.'

'True,' she conceded. 'However, the similarities of attitude between you two are exceptional. Even your life paths…'

'Do tell,' he invited, pouring himself more tea.

'Altair was the darling of the Brotherhood, the envy of his Brothers,' she began expansively, not really looking at him anymore but through him as her memory cast itself back to the the tale of one of the key figures of the Assassins. 'His Master, his boss really, would send him to do the toughest jobs, the most dangerous tasks.' She paused, sniffed. 'And he did them well.'

'Shame he isn't around now,' he quipped.

Her eyes focused on him. 'Ain't he?' Something indefinable tinged her voice, something that sent a shiver down his spine. He looked at her over the rim of the tea cup: what did she mean?

'One time his boss set him a rather delicate task,' she continued, ignoring his stare. 'To retrieve a treasure that the Templars had found and had concealed under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.'

'A heist,' Jacob summarized, interested now. 'Love those.'

'So did Altair. He prided himself on his sneakiness. He'd once killed a Templar inside a chapterhouse without anyone noticing until the man dropped dead into his wine.' Olga shook her head, imagining the scene: Templars seated around the table, drinking and eating, discussing their business - until one of them, called upon to speak, instead rises only to fall face first into his wine goblet.

'So, the treasure?' Jacob prodded her out of the reverie.

'Yes, the treasure… a Piece of Eden in fact.' Her eyebrows rose in amusement at his groan. She knew his attitude towards these mysterious artifacts of the past that had too much power and too little science to be understood or studied properly. 'A magic ball of hyperbolic metal, I believe,' she added with a soft laugh recalling his words to Evie.

'One of those, huh?' He sighed, wiping his face with one hand. Chasing something that you couldn't use against the Templars was a waste of time and effort: hiding these Pieces served no other purpose than to attract Templar attention.

'Yes, one of those,' she confirmed and continued. 'So, off Altair went to Jerusalem to get the treasure. With him went his friend and rival Malik and Malik's younger brother Kadar.'

'A trio, makes sense,' the Assassin commended the old man's wisdom.

'To a criminal yes,' she remarked with a laugh at his expense.

'Very funny, Olga,' he huffed.

'It wasn't though…' She sighed. 'They entered the Templar headquarters unseen but… the Templar Order knew they were coming and had posted a sentry, an old man, to watch the secret ways.' Her voice became tinged with sadness. 'Altair killed him.' Now her eyes bore into his. 'Altair made a mistake, believing in his arrogance that his way was right.'

Jacob frowned. Was she implying what he thought she was implying?

'Malik attempted to remonstrate but Altair shrugged him off and so on they went, arguing honour and the Creed. Malik accused his friend of breaking one of the central tenets…'

'Don't kill innocents,' Jacob said, almost by rote, the words falling from his lips. 'Damn…'

'Damn indeed,' the Russian Assassin nodded. 'The argument didn't stop there. Once they'd spotted the Templars removing the treasure, Malik suggested a subtler approach but Altair as the ranking Assassin, a MASTER Assassin no less, overruled him.' Once more she locked stares with him. 'He decided to confront the Templar Grand Master openly.'

'Ah, that's a man after my own heart,' the chief of the Rooks grinned. He liked this long dead Master Assassin already. He had his own ambitions of reaching that exalted status and rising higher still. George Westhouse was a coward, a scurrying mouse among other mice of the Council that sat on its hands and did nothing!

'I thought you'd like him. I did say you shared much in common.' Olga shifted in her seat, drank off her cooling tea.

'So what happened?'

'They failed,' she said bluntly. 'Rather, Altair failed. The Grand Master overpowered him, threw him from the chamber into some scaffolding which brought down the wall. His guards killed Kadar and wounded Malik. While Altair ran off. Without the Piece of Eden.'

'His boss couldn't have been happy,' Jacob surmised, his mind jumping forward to the fallout. Himself, as the leader of the gang, he didn't like failure of his operatives or unsuccessful missions.

'He wasn't. Once Altair got back, his boss demoted him, knocked him down to the rank of novice, accusing him of being arrogant and breaking the Creed.'

'The old man…' A haunted look suddenly appeared in his eyes. Millner. His one mistake, his biggest one, bigger even than killing Twopenny. Millner, the omnibus company owner whose life he'd taken believing him to be a Templar agent, tricked into murdering him by Pearl Attaway, who must've laughed in glee at the idea of a Templar using an Assassin to remove competition. That still rankled, even now.

'Yes, that old man… Altair's arrogance, his cockiness and overconfidence were his downfall. He had to work his way back up the Order and learn from his mistakes.' Each word hit him like a blow, each word so fitting to what he'd done, what he'd felt. No wonder she had said he'd looked at Altair every day in the mirror: the same cockiness, the same quick thinking. The same bloody mistake!

'I see you are beginning to understand,' she noted, watching the play of emotion across his face. 'Altair had it all, the charisma, the skills, the aptitude to be a Master Assassin, a leader, a chief which he eventually became, taking the Brotherhood to untold heights of glory. He LEARNED, Jacob, from his mistakes.' She'd sat forward now, eyes intent, wanting him to hear her, to listen, to comprehend what she was saying. 'It was his attitude that was the problem. The attitude of an overconfident child who'd grown up without a father.'

He glared at her now, nostrils flaring. His father? Was that her whole point? To bring up his FATHER just like Evie?

'I know you believe your father to have been a stiffnecked prick.' She read him so well! 'And mayhap he was. But you don't have to live in his shadow, Jacob, pulled this way and that by kneejerk reaction to what a dead man may think of you.' Her tone had become stronger, more persuasive. She knew what she was talking about. 'He's dead, is Ethan Frye. You are not him, Jacob. You are your own man.' Her finger stabbed the table between them with every word. 'A man who has it all, the charisma, the skills, the aptitude…' She trailed off, watching him expectantly. He opened his mouth to say something impudent as was his habit. And nothing came. No rejoinder, no witty repartee. Now that Evie wasn't here to badger him, he'd had time to do some thinking: about the gang, the Assassins, the future, even if it was only a little bit. He'd not really taken a look at himself though. He hadn't felt a need to: he was Jacob Frye, the gangster, the leader of the syndicate, the Assassin in charge of London. The Council had reacted with shock, disbelief and even not a little anger when they'd finally come to realize that it was the Frye twins who'd wrecked Starrick's operations so thoroughly and gained control of the Shroud. They'd sent rather stern letters and George had come to give them a lecture on their failure to obey orders - to which they'd only smiled and shrugged. What's done is done, so…. No point in chewing old soup. George had raged, venting his own feelings of guilt at his own cowardice and lack of initiative. He should have known that the irrepressible twins would do something like this, even Evie, who ordinarily did not rebel so openly as her brother who was a powder keg to be set off at any provocation. He'd been sent to bring them back to face the consequences of what they'd done, to which Evie had sighed and agreed to but which had only elicited a sneering snort from Jacob, who knew exactly how that meeting would play out and he hadn't been disappointed. The usual homilies and prattle of duty, the Creed and all had been the reception of the two errant Fryes, most of which he'd simply let slide by. He'd heard it all before from his 'saintly' father. He had had no need to hear it again from the mouths of old men and women whose time was long past.

'You're already the Master Assassin,' she spoke into his thoughts, cleaning up the table, taking the dirty dishes to the washing tub to soak for later. 'Act like it. Think like it. BE it.' She leaned on the table, arms folded. 'Altair was the Creed. He didn't need to master it. He was born to be it.' Again their eyes locked as he looked up at her. 'So were you.'

'I….' He inhaled slowly, his mind in a whirl of ideas and feelings that he had never truly examined or brought to light. 'You think?'

'I KNOW,' she said with total conviction. 'Just look at what you did with the Rooks.' One finger went up as her face cleared. 'And that reminds me.' Her face took on a rather amused cast of a cat with a secret. 'The ladies asked to talk to you.'

'What ladies?' He blinked in confusion, this sudden change of subject from his own shortcomings and apparent need to mature to the business of some ladies.

'The ones you saved from Lord Braddock, of course,' she said blandly, enjoying his rattled state. She'd rarely seen him like this, disconcerted like a fish out of water. 'They're on the train, they have a proposition for you.'

'What kind of proposition?' His voice cracked slightly: ladies and propositions…. He could be charming around women and usually was. He had no intention of taking it further than that with any woman of any station whatsoever. He valued his freedom, his independence of action and thought too much to chain himself to any representative of the fair sex.

'A business proposition,' Olga replied, still in that urbanely amused tone. 'A rather intriguing one, actually.' Her brown eyes glinted in amusement at what she saw in his face, his body - she knew him that well.

'Oh?' His eyebrows lifted as he attempted to remain indifferent to her penetrating stare: she observed too much, in his opinion, thought and puzzled things out too often. She had entirely too much time on her hands - her mind, rather.

'Come and they'll tell you,' she hurried him along with a tap on his shoulder, already at the door.

Nellie and Lizzie stared at the swaggering figure who'd just walked through the door of the safe house they'd been taken to last night and then looked at each other, the same thought running through their heads: here was a looker and not a doubt about it. What made it even more intriguing was that he appeared to be completely oblivious to the effect he had on the women in the large room who were all watching him intently, some clearly with a predatory assessment, others in awe mixed in with fear and uncertainty. After all their future was up in the air now. They could never go back to Fair Rosamund, nor did they wish to. They had been under duress there. Here they were free. Or so it seemed.

'Good day, ladies,' they were greeted with a sardonic smirk underneath a slightly lifted hat which was returned to his rich mop of brown hair. Nellie smiled at his poise albeit she could feel he wasn't quite comfortable with so much womanhood present. Yet he carried himself well, sitting in a comfy chair by the table, legs stretched out, clearly at ease now in his territory. 'I hope your night wasn't too adventurous.' That last word came after a barely perceptible pause and caused a few muted giggles to break out, a scowl or two at such flippancy. Lizzie snorted at the same moment as the woman who'd put them on the train walked into the door and harrumphed in turn.

'Boss, you're an ass,' she told him without any sort of deference, grinning crookedly as she found her own seat in an armchair, hat tossed onto the table with a careless gesture of a person who cared little for proprieties.

'You forgot to add 'bloody' so that'll cost you a sixpence,' he remarked with an absolutely straight face belied by the merry twinkle in his eye. Nellie and Lizzie traded amused glances: this one was quick of wit, no wonder he had such loyal and 'obedient' employees.

'Ladies, do you see what I have to put up with?' the short woman complained to the room at large with a dramatically theatrical eye roll, a flamboyant hand gesture and a sufferer's sigh. 'You sure you want to do business with this… man?' Her smirk was pure lasciviousness which Nellie for one could appreciate: clearly she wasn't afraid of her high and mighty handsome bossman and the teasing only showed her respect, not lack thereof. Nellie could well remember her own father's friends joking and bantering in just such a manner with him. What these two had went far beyond the working relationship they had.

Jacob raised his eyes to the ceiling, slapping his thighs. 'Now that will cost you two sixpence, maybe even a shilling,' he warned.

'You can have that, so long as you listen to what Nellie and Lizzie here have to say,' she replied mildly steering the conversation back to the matter at hand. 'Ladies, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Jacob Frye, the smuggest bastard in all of London.' She paused. 'Permit me to rephrase that.' Her leer became more pronounced which made the other women in the room snicker in complicity, not all of them concealing that either. 'The biggest bastard in all of the British bloody Empire.' She chuckled. 'There, I didn't forget the bloody this time, so that means I get one of my sixpence back?' Her face was drawn into a most chaste expression of employee contrition.

The young man, with the scarred face of a street pugilist and the finest fingers of a court dandy that Lizzie had ever seen, allowed a quick flash of anger to cross his features before they settled back into their perfectly habitual ironic twist.

'Ladies, why don't you be seated?' he invited the two young women, Nellie and Lizzie, who nodded at him, cheeks dimpling as if they were sisters, and gave the signal to the others to do the same. 'My associate here,' he went on once everyone was on an equal level. 'Informs me that you have a proposal to make.' Tenting his fingers, elbows resting on his belly, he watched them from under the brim of his hat. 'I'm listening.'

'It's simple really,' Nellie spoke first, tossing her black curls over her shoulder. 'We would like to work with you.' A slight emphasis on 'with' that didn't escape anyone. Olga's slight curve of the lips was one of approval: good on you, girls, don't let him dictate. Not that he would, she knew. Jacob was very much laissez-faire.

'Oh? On what terms?' he asked, intrigued despite himself. What could these women offer by way of business?

'A partnership,' Lizzie said at once in a firm tone, her green eyes on his.

'A partnership?' He rubbed his chin. 'Exactly what kind of partnership?'

'Information gathering services in return for protection,' Nellie said baldly, also not taking her eyes off him. He was most well put together. It was hard not to stare. The man exuded animal magnetism and was entirely unaware of the effect he had on the women in this room, including his partner in crime. To Nellie, well versed in the art of wrapping men around her finger and making them feel loved, the diminutive woman was obviously attracted to him and just as obviously unable to deal with that and how it made her feel. Hence the cutting remarks, the caustic humour. A cover for her discomfort. Soon, though, Nellie thought to herself, you'll have to confront it, honey, and then I don't envy you, either of you.

'You want to be my eyes and ears in the upper crusts of society,' he guessed at once, pursing his lips. This truly was a pretty good idea: he had his sources among the poor of London, the underclasses, the thieves, the gangs. However, it was the rich like Lord Braddock who made laws by which the poor had to live and answer for their crimes. Insinuating his gang into those circles had proved difficult.

'Yes, we heard you could use those,' Nellie said, permitting herself a slight smirk. He obviously enjoyed a challenge: what could possibly be more of a trial than taking on the biggest corporate structure that ruled a city with an iron fist like Starrick and Co. as he had done?

'And you want my Rooks to be your security,' he added, pressing the edges of those fine fingers to his lips in thought. 'What's to be my security?'

'Ten percent,' Lizzie said at once and heard the female Rook snort in derision.

'Twenty five,' Jacob said in the tone of someone who was almost bored.

'Twelve.' Nellie's voice rang out like a challenge and she saw the gang boss and his associate exchange glances. The woman shrugged just slightly, threw them a sideways glance.

'Twenty,' their new partner said in a tone of finality. 'Just in case there's any… collateral damage, which is not unheard of in my line of work.' He found Nellie's gaze. "Or yours.'

Lizzie looked at Nellie, who looked at her, then they both turned to look at their friends in misfortune. Hope, relief, knowledge that perhaps they were safe now, resignation to their new freedom: the gamut of emotions and thoughts was fairly obvious. They'd been freed. They owed a debt which they'd turned into a working relationship to make it sting less - not that it stung that badly: it seemed the Rooks' boss let live for the most part. He wasn't about to start combing through their account books just to cause bother to his investment. Twenty percent of profits wasn't so much to pay for peace of mind or body. From the looks of these two, the Rooks definitely were not shabby or undertrained in matters of bodily security.

Nellie took a deep breath as she turned back to stare at the insolent and yet somehow trustworthy gang boss. She approached him as he stood, still watching her eyes. Carefully she spat into her hand and held it out. He grinned and spat in his, gripping hers in a strong but not crushing grip.

'It's a deal, Mr. Frye,' she said firmly.

'So tis,' he agreed easily, his lips twisting into what had to be his habitual expression of ironic contempt for the world at large. 'Welcome to the family, ladies,' he smiled at the other women. 'Welcome to the Rooks.'