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Chapter 19: Confrontation

Ezio Parodi walked alongside the king. The two of them conversed in French. It was more of a courtesy to the people around them than anything else. They were discussing the poet of the palace as they went to the throne room. They had to find out who it was.

'Ce que j'ai du mal à croire comment le poète a po,' Abner said. 'Comment pouvait-il glissé devant moi?'

Ezio mused that he had a point. Abner seemed to have eyes and ears everywhere. How could this Jones fellow sneak a poet into Versailles right under his nose? Abner huffed in irritation as they walked.

'Je suis d'accord,' Ezio said as they walked into the throne room. 'Pour faire quelque chose comme ça je trouve très…' He was cut off.

'Presumptuous?'

Ezio and Abner both stopped and looked up. Sitting on the throne, slouched complete with one leg thrown over the arm, was a man that Ezio had only seen in photographs. A slow smirk spread of the man's face.

Abner stepped forward, his eyes burning in fury. 'Henry Jones Junior, comment avez-vous…'

Jones cut him off too. 'If you don't speak in English, Abe, I'm not going to answer you.'

Abner scowled and complied. 'How did you get in here?' This Jones fellow must've been a man of his word.

'I have a friend with blueprints of the place,' Jones said.

'I have guards everywhere you would have had to go through,' Abner pointed out.

'You used to.' As Jones said this, he looked to the side and four men walked in from the back entrance: a black man with a short but thick beard, a blond white man with long sideburns, a brown man that was completely clean shaven and a second white man, also clean shaven.

'Where'd you put the bodies?' Jones asked them.

'We just threw them out of the window,' the clean shaven white man said. He was evidentially British. 'It's against my training, but it will provide a good cover when we're finished here.'

'Nice thinking.' Jones looked back at Abner. 'You know Kamau and Leo.' Kamau clearly the black one while Leo was the brown man. Jones pointed to the blond. 'Sigurd Dalen and Carlos Shields.' Carlos was the Englishman.

Despite the situation, Ezio was about to mention that "Carlos" was not a British name.

Abner scowled. 'None of these men are the poet you have in my ranks.'

'In your ranks.' Jones chuckled. 'I wouldn't say the poet was in your ranks. If you had as much common sense as you think you do, you'd have worked it out by now.' He leaned his head back. 'Funny thing. I always thought, when I found out about your heritage, that if you ever found the Ark I'd have to be the one to fight you. I thought I'd be like Leo.'

'Understandable,' Leo said, completely un-offended.

'What does that mean?' Ezio demanded.

Jones straightened up. 'You see, Parodi, Leo had to kill the fellow that taught him how to be a man. He had no choice. The guy went mad. It was kill or be killed. I thought it'd end like that if Abner ever got the Ark. I thought I'd have to kill him.'

Ezio drew back.

Abner scoffed. 'If I had the Ark, you wouldn't be able to kill me, Henry. I'd be invincible.'

Jones smirked. 'Did you forget Abner? You gave me your diary on the Ark and I never got around to giving it back. There's a loophole for everything and, unfortunately for you, you wrote it down in here.' Jones stood up. 'You want to know who my poet is? Go to the circle of obelisks.'

Abner scowled but then he smirked and turned to Ezio. 'It looks like this is where you begin, my boy. Take care of them and set an example.' He turned and walked out.

Ezio drew his sword. Jones didn't even have the brains to look nervous. Instead he watched Abner go. Ezio thought back to his training and readied himself. Suddenly, Jones's hand moved to his belt swiftly.

Kuh-RACK!

The sword was yanked out of Ezio's hand and sent flying across the room. His fingers and wrist stung. Jones coiled up a long bullwhip as he walked down from the throne. He handed his whip off to Leo and glared at Ezio.

'Playtime is over, Parodi,' Jones said. 'It's time to fight like a man.'

Like a man? Did he just tell him to fight like a man? Ezio gritted his teeth and drew himself up. He looked Jones right in the eye. 'How dare you speak to me like that! I am Sir Ezio Parodi, knighted by His Majesty, Victor Emmanuel III himself. And what do you have, archaeologist? A whip? A gun? A sharp tongue and four friends whose only purpose seems to be to observe.'

Jones's calm manner unnerved him if he was honest. Then the American said something so passively it had to be true. And it was spoken of with a shrug of the shoulders, like he didn't regard it as that big of a deal.

'I was a Captain in the United States Army by the time I was twenty.'