It was several hours since the Assassin had escaped Mirabeau's manor. His work often lent itself to such: hours of hiding and carefully planned movement to escape the radius of excitement. He was at last back in Le Quartier Latin. He was very hungry and thirsty now, eager to return the hospitality of their cottage. Surely he would have a warm welcome from his fellows. They would probably have an evening of revelry. Arno could already taste the ale.

He had stirred on the old man's last words at first, but had deemed to push them out of his mind: it was easy to get swept up into non-sense in such a monumental moment. Everyone wanted to justify his existence.

Though he did wonder what an Illuminatus was.

Their quaint little home came into view. No one was outside.

A crow perched on the front yard's stone wall flew away as he approached. He opened the front door.

What he saw shocked him: the bloodied bodies of Bellec and Joseph! Bellec was face down, and Joseph slumped against the kitchen cabinet with a knife in his throat.

He stood, frozen. His breaths became shallow as a puddle.

Was the killer still about?

He put his hand on his sword hilt and slowly, very softly stepped in. He looked to his right. His eye caught the body of Paul, crumbled down next to the book shelf. And a woman with a gun pointed at his head! A woman he knew, now in much more practical and masculine clothing! Frozen, he looked into those icy blue eyes. Once beautiful, the angel had revealed herself to be a demon.

"You...you from the festival...You killed them!"

And now she would kill him? Send a musket ball crashing through his skull and into his brain, splattering viscera all over the floor in a gruesome end to the life of Arno Dorian?

"You're not Robespierre, are you? But no, I didn't kill any of them."

"Why should I believe you?" Arno growled. His heart pounded frantically as he stared down the barrel of the weapon. These might be his last moments, but he would suffer them with some dignity.

"I'm flattered you think I'm capable. Three Assassins, all by my lonesome?"

She had a point. Arno's aggressive instincts mellowed a little. It is also likely if she were hostile, she would have also killed him by now. But he was still full of a torrent of aggressive emotions.

"Then who did?"

And, less pressingly, how did she know of their Order?

"Have you heard of a man named Maximellien Robespierre? He was in the area, in the company of foreigners. I came here to track him down. I think he may have had something to do with this."

'Foreigners,' that word hit Arno like a brick.

"I met a Frenchman in the sewers before I - he wore a striped coat and powdered wig. He was a with a couple of étrangers. One named Johan, and named...Cosimo, if I recall."

She lowered her pistol, her expression softened. For a flash he remembered the woman he met in July.

"Mon Dieu..." Their hostilities had all but seeped away. "Was anyone else there? Jean-Paul Marat? He's an ugly little man who -"

"No, just those three."

Her musket was now lowered all the way to her side. The adversarial air between them was now completely gone. She looked deep in worry and thought.

Finally she asked, "What else do you know?"

"Nothing...though they gave me this."

He walked over to the table where he had rested the map, next to the couch where he had last studied it. He remembered joking with Joseph as he studied it once last time before leaving to kill Gabriel Riqueti. He grabbed it, and handed it to Élise.

She holstered her pistol and took it with two hands. For a brief moment he considered turning the tables, but quickly dismissed the thought.

"A lot of things are starting to make sense..." she said, words parting from those soft pink lips he had gazed into so many times that summer night.

With all the hostility drained, Arno was full of crazy feelings. Half of him wanted to hug her and weep.

"To you, not to me," Arno said. "Why are you here? How did you know about...us, all this?

She rolled up the parchment.

"It seems we have a common enemy," she said, now brisk and serious again.

Arno's hostility, in a small measure, returned. "I've heard that before, from the men you say killed my brothers. Tell me who you are!"

"You know who I am. Élise-Emma de la Caen."

"But who do you work for?"

"What makes you think I work for anyone?"

"I-"

Arno was frustrated.

"Would you rather I give you information, or help you track down the men who killed your friends?"

He was silent. Trusting mysterious strangers was what got him here.

But what did he have to lose, now?

"Fine."

"Come on, then. We can't waste any time."

She headed for the other door. Her mannerisms had hardened again just as quickly as they had softened. Arno gave the dead one last look. Paul wore his hidden-blade, but it was bloodied, as if he had stabbed his assailant. Yet there was no blood nearby that did not seem to radiate from his body. There was a hole in his throat, like Arno had inflicted upon his enemies with the same weapon.

That was very strange. It seemed to point to suicide. Could it really be?

He looked again at the other two. Joseph's body was slumped against the kitchen cabinet. Their steak knife was embedded in his throat.

Bellec's body faced the ground. He had a bloody hole in his back: Perhaps it was an exit wound, but-

"Arno?"

"Right, coming."