"A lover is a man who tries to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be." -Nicholas de Chamfort

-o-

The prison was haunting at night. Sometimes it was so quiet and still that it could have been a cemetery, lit silver blue with moonlight. Jacqueline paced her and Connor's shared cell, her footsteps and quiet breathing like a nervous melody. Her fingers plucked at the shoulders of her dirty shirt to keep it from falling off. Now outrageously long, her hair wagged back and forth like a tail while she walked.

"We need a plan." She decided, grasping her braid. "If we break out with no plan, this will have been in vain. Where do we go from here?"

"I have watched the guards leaving through a room on the top floor." Connor turned the carved key over in his hands. "That's likely the closest way out."

"The guard passes by in a few minutes. We should try before the next one sees."

A few minutes ticked by. An owl hooted outside, not far from their tiny barred window. Someone clanged against the bars of their door on the other side of the yard, and a few others shouted at him to shut up. The guard they were waiting for passed, and Connor stood to try the key. It jangled in the lock, but after a few seconds of trying, clearly didn't work.

"This key is useless!" Connor hissed.

"What?"

"What're you looking at?" The next guard was a little ahead of schedule, and he snarled at them. Connor backed away from the door, and he left.

"Weems gave us a fake?" Jacqueline didn't expect an answer. "Why?"

"Perhaps he is working with the Templars." Connor sat down on their stone bed.

She joined him. "But why give us a key at all, then?"

Silence fell over the prison again. Jacqueline dropped onto her back and sighed. "We may as well sleep now and find Weems in the morning."

They did just that, and the next morning when they were let out of their cells, Connor went on a Weems hunt. George Washington's biggest fan was near where they had found him the day before, sitting by himself and writing in a journal with a short gray quill.

"Your key is useless!" Connor accused. Jacqueline felt his fingers tighten into her waist and wriggled uncomfortably.

"What do you mean?" Weems finished writing a sentence and looked up at them, like they were just tax collectors who could be given time to wait.

"It did not fit the lock."

"It's not meant to." Weems said it like it was obvious.

"Then why did you give us a fake key?" Jacqueline demanded. "It doesn't work!"

"Well, that all depends on what you mean by "work". It'll get us out of here, just not the way you expected.

The Assassins looked at each other, equally skeptical. "Then how?" Connor asked.

Weems sat forward. "You're going to use it to get the real key off the warden. You're going to swap that key for his."

"Why not just have me take the real key? Why all this extra work?"

"He might notice if it's missing. This way, he'll be none the wiser."

"Wait, wait." Jacqueline waved a hand as though to waft away the conversation. "There's a hole in your plan. What if the warden tries using the fake?"

"He won't. That's why we're targetting him."

"Then how do we reach the warden?"

"Yes…this next part you may not like." Weems dipped his quill in the inkwell and tapped it off inside.

"As if I've liked the others? Out with it!" Connor was a man to get impatient quickly, and Weems' constant amusement wasn't helping. That was why he had Jacqueline.

"Patience, Connor." She soothed, placing her hand over the one he had on her waist.

"You'll need to pick a fight." Weems told them. At their looks, he continued, "If you pick a fight they'll throw you in the pit."

"How in the world does this help us?" Connor demanded.

"The warden oversees the pit. Getting sent there is the only way to reach him. And only one of you two should do it." He added quickly. "I may need some help up here in the land of the living. So decide who goes down."

There was no discussion, actually. Jacqueline knew any argument about her going to the pit was going to be useless. She broke away from Connor and sat in the chair across from Weems with a defeated sigh. He was the only person she knew who could win an argument without even starting one.

"I'll give you credit…you've given this plan to risk my life a great deal of thought." Connor placed his hands on the back of her chair.

"Take down as many as you can." Weems continued as though he hadn't heard him. "One or two will only serve to entertain the guards. You need to make them angry. We all have our part to play. Try not to die."

"Hey," Jacqueline reached back and grabbed Connor's arm before he could walk off. He stepped back and looked inquisitively down at her. "For good luck." She pulled him down to her level and kissed his cheek. "See you on the other side."

So she and Mason Weems sat and watched while Connor boldly strode into the middle of the yard and up to a gang of criminals. He turned one around by the shoulders and punched him in the face. Weems laughed and Jacqueline cringed at the force of the blow. The others of the first man gang, about six in total, surrounded Connor. Around them, a larger ring of prisoners blocked off their view.

The crowd would roar and thrash occasionally, like a beast of its own accord. Jacqueline could only imagine what kind of fight must be happening inside that ring. Weems was standing on his table, looking over the heads of the inmates. At her amused look, he moved aside for her to join him.

It was Connor against five others. Two men were on the ground, and faint spatter of blood here and there. The faint, meaty thunks as fists connected to bodies were near grotesque. It was uncensored brutality, even worse than normal. Something about the rags, or environment, or the enemies he was up against made it that much more violent. There was no question as to whether Connor could handle himself in a fight; she already knew he could. The question was how many men would he beat half to death before the guards stepped in.

The answer to that was seven. Finally, a guard pushed through the ring of inmates and struck Connor over the head twice with his baton. Now stunned, reinforcements stepped in and dragged him away.

Weems hopped off the table. "Well, there we have it. Now we wait until tonight. That's my cell." He pointed. "You'll have to help me spring out so we can rendezvous with Connor."

"And how do I spring out?" Jacqueline asked.

"I'm afraid I can't be of much help there."

"I see."

"Just wait until it's dark, and try not to get caught." He smiled and looked back to his journal. Jacqueline was about to interrogate him further, but then they were called back into their cells, and she trudged reluctantly away.

-o-

That night she had to think about how she could break out of her cell. She stared at the ceiling, the rotting wood planks and stone masonry. A leak of dirty water dripped down next to her leg. Stone wouldn't work, because it had to be small enough to move the tumblers. She anxiously wrung her braid around her hand. Her lockpick had been lost on their first try at freedom, as had her handmade tool to turn the lock.

Ghostly footsteps echoed down the hall, a whisper of movement in the quiet cellblock. For a moment, she believed it was a guard, but that was disproven when the figure shadowed the door. Just by the boots she could see that he was no guard, nor was he barefooted Weems. A hooded head turned this way and that, being sure he was not being watched. The moonlight from the window behind Jacqueline illuminated a face half covered by a cloth over his mouth and nose. She sat up. It was her stalker.

"Why are you here?" She spoke her question in French.

He replied in the same language. "To help." A light twinkling of metal drew her eyes to the floor, where a few lockpicks had been tossed.

She watched them for a moment. "Why are you following me?"

"Sometimes even the best need assistance." A whistling birdcall from far away, outside the prison, made him look over his shoulder. "I'll see you soon."

"Wait, don't…" Jacqueline lunged toward the door, hands groping out the bars, but he was gone. "…go."

She looked at her feet. The lockpicks were cold and hard under her soles, and she shifted away. Quickly snatching them up before the guards saw, she tucked them into the waist of her trousers but for one. Using that one, she picked her cell door and snuck out. It took her a few minutes to remember where Weems' cell was, but she found him and sprung him.

"Good to see you in one piece." He greeted with a tone that suggested he expected her to have gotten him out all along.

"Connor will have gotten the key off the warden by now. We should go meet him."

They jogged off, avoiding the guards' paths. It was hard to see by moonlight, but it almost looked like there was a group of people walking down the corridor. Weems vanished, the little weasel he was, leaving Jacqueline to jump over the banister and hide over the edge of the wall. Boots stomped past her head and around the corner toward her now empty cell. A little sliver of panic wormed into her, but she brushed it off and rejoined the now visible Weems.

The pair was slipping down the steps to the lower yard when they heard the yell above their heads. "Go, go." Jacqueline waved Weems on and took one of the lockpicks from her trouser belt out.

"We're all getting out of here."

"Not today we aren't. I'll be fine." She physically pushed him on. "Now go!"

He ran off toward the pit, leaving Jacqueline to turn and face recapture. A pair of guards walked toward her, leading two other men. It took her a moment to realise one of those men was Thomas Hickey, and the other was Charles Lee. In another moment she considered running right after Weems to warn him of their fools errand, but decided against it and stood her ground.

"How'd you know she was out?" One of the guards asked Lee.

"Her cell was empty, was it not? Surely she was still on the grounds. Where's that native boy you like so much?" Lee turned his attention to Jacqueline.

"Don't bother, sir. This one's made a try to escape on 'er first day. Reckon she ain't gonna talk much."

Jacqueline's hand was a flash in the dark, and the lockpick she had stashed flicked past Hickey's ear and clinked against the floor behind him. "Whoa-ho, don't suppose you'll be doin' much damage with that now, will ya?" He chuckled.

"No matter. Eventually, she will bow." Lee smiled greasily at her. "How ironic. In your plan to escape you fled right into our arms. I do believe you will be of much use to us in the coming days." He turned to the guards. "You know what to do. Come along, Thomas."

Jacqueline managed to keep her expression impassive while they bound her hands, tied a gag in her mouth, and finally blindfolded her. The strike to her head was a surprise, though. It left her dazed and seeing flashes of red and white. Hands grasped her under her arms and began dragging her. Kidnapped in the dead of night, only to be taken out of prison, she thought. Ironic indeed.

Fresh air cooled her face, and she knew she was outside. Her bare toes scraped across the dirt, then stone, then dirt again, and finally grass. Horses nickered nearby, and she was heaved into the air and onto the back of one of the snorting beasts. Blind, handicapped and mute, she was powerless as the horse was mounted by who she assumed to be one of the guards. He spurred the horse on, and they galloped off into the brisk autumn night.

And so began her torture.

-o-

-Who's our mystery guest?

-Review for Weems!