AN: Thanks to skywalker05 for the read-through. Every time I consider writing a multichapter fic, there's one scene, one half-formed idea, that gets into my head and prompts all the rest of it. In And When the Earth... it was the end of the epilogue. In this story, it's the end of this chapter.
The Balance of Debt
"Master! By God, help!"
The sun is bright on the ground and bright on the man, and garish where it touches his bloody hands. The assassin is dressed not in the streamlined cuts of a messenger but the long robes and heavy weaponry of a guard. He tucks his bearded chin to his chest and crouches with exhaustion in the dust. The guards at Masyaf's main gate look on in apprehension; the villagers swarm by the market stalls in nervous bunches, no one buying or selling or even talking in more than murmurs.
It was common, in the depths of the wartimes, for assassins to stagger in half-dead. It isn't unheard of now. But this man finds the base of the path that curves up the cliff to the mountain, drops to his knees to hug the ground, and shouts murder and mayhem 'till all the village comes spilling from its huts.
Someone fetches Malik and a few of the higher-ranked scholars. No one needs to fetch Altair. He slips from a hut's shadows to stand in the center of the throng, and even as his men are saying someone should tell him he's pushing his way past.
"Master!" the man cries. "I came—I only barely made it, I alone—all this way—you must send help!"
Altair considers the assassin's wounds. His arms and forehead are cut, his lips cracked with thirst, but there's too much red on his tunic for all that.
"I come from Seljuk territory, from Izmir. Master, we were attacked."
Altair says, '"We'? The whole city? We've had no reports, no messages."
"Messages burn," cries the man, "and their bearers too. They knew exactly where to find us, Master, and they came in such numbers and…everything in their past they wiped out, all our defenses, all the people of our area. And that was a fraction of their army. I saw them as I was fleeing, a great mass, it was…it was more men than in all of Europe spread out on the flatlands, waiting for orders! I, I slipped away, I…somehow…"
Altair feels the eyes, assassin and civilian, pressing at his back. Al Mualim would never have allowed it. Al Mualim did his work in private so no one would see him fret. But Malik scolds Altair enough as it is for hiding away.
"Who are they?" he demands of the man. Shameful, really! that an assassin would in public clutch the earth and weep. "Templars?"
"Mongols!"
The crowd draws a collective breath.
"They were looking for us. They are looking for us. A whole army. And their general is fiercer than seven Saladins combined."
Malik steps forward, enough to separate from the crowd, though he keeps behind Altair. "Why were they searching for us?" he asks. "Did they say? What were their demands?"
"I don't know, Lord, they were, they wanted something. Not just our territory, our coffers, but something else. I don't know what. Some secret weapon."
Altair's ears pick the whisper from the breeze. Secret weapon, it sighs. Isn't that what our Grandmaster hides? You've heard the stories? You were there? You remember the day when Brother slew Brother, with minds of mush and eyes of fog? Yes, you remember that. The Grandmaster said such a weapon should be destroyed.
Altair will not stand for gossip. "The Mongols are Templars," he says, loud enough for all to hear. "They want what the Templars have always wanted, to rule over mankind, to make our choices for us. The Mongol leader, Genghis Khan…he expects us to fear him. But de Sablé had an army also, and little good it did him."
"And Al Mualim? What of his army?"
Altair turns, but the speaker is lost in the throng. It's easier to lose the man than the words: the mood has gone wrong in the crowd, has shifted imperceptibly from worry to a different agitation. Malik scans the crowd, his hand crooked on his wrist. He's fiddling with the hilt of a throwing knife, Altair knows, something he does only when uneasy.
The assassin at Altair's feet says, "Please, Master, before the whole area is overrun. Please send men to fight them. Kill their leader like you killed the Templar leaders before him. Kill him if you mean to save us!"
"I will not leave the village—"
"Then you don't want to save us," calls the voice.
Again Altair turns, but Malik is on it, ducking through the crowd. Three dozen faces, or more, watch him hunt out the assassin who would contradict the Master in public. Altair feels the familiar warmth, seeing him do this, seeing him so openly choose a side.
The others, many of them, have hooded eyes and curled lips, but Altair doesn't care. So long as Malik's lip isn't curling it's no danger to him.
("Save us," says the ghost, picking its cheery way through the crowd, standing at the wounded man's shoulder and adding bloodstains to its uniform.)
"I won't leave Masyaf," he says, though he yearns to do it, yearns to have only this one kill in front of him, and his thoughts only on all the ways in which a man may die. Between an assassin and his target, how can there be betrayal? Death was impartial for him once, his skills a fair decider. Dead men did not double-cross.
"I won't leave the heart of the Brotherhood unattended unless there is no other way. Khan will die. But well-defended as he is, he must be praying for the Assassin Grandmaster to walk into his trap. Let him come closer, let him trip over his own deceit. Then we'll strike."
"That is an excuse!" a new voice exclaims.
A second person: "More people will die while you wait."
A third, this one an assassin: "He doesn't care. He's never cared about them."
Altair can't see Malik through the throng any longer, but he wonders if the Dai isn't about to laugh. It sounds like an excuse. Altair has walked into many a trap, and gone out the other end wreathed with entrails and smiling. Malik must be laughing. But then, that is his right. Malik alone may call him foolish, or afraid.
(Because he was both those things, then, with only Malik there to see. Because he can't be both those things now, when the Order is scared and seething in his grasp, pinning him with pairs of eyes as sharp as the dagger Malik keeps tucked in his sleeve.)
"If they've burned that city they'll burn the rest! What of Kapısuyu?" This voice is recognizable. Ali has pushed his way to the front, Abbas his glowering shadow as is typical these days.
Grey Ali. Unimportant Ali. Abbas behind him flares red, so red that Altair sees it even when he isn't using his Eagle's Vision: but that is nothing new. Hasn't Abbas been red since they were children? Since Al Mualim bent before a boy of six and said, "You have a talent, child. You have been chosen. You can see the truth and never be wrong."
"You have to protect Kapısuyu," Ali moans, squeaky with fright. Altair never trusts men who smile, but Ali is undeniably scared. "My family is there. Please, go, Grandmaster. Please, with your best men!"
"Enough," Altair says, and waves his hand. Stares at Ali until he settles down. "I will send help for the Izmir bureau." And he gives names that he knows will impress, several of them, throwing them like knives into the crowd. His best successes, his most dedicated fighters. Assassins who will kill for Grandmaster Altair. He gives these names to show that he can. The eyes watching him soften. He will force from them their trust.
I am the Master, he says. And you may not doubt me.
-i-
Malik finds him, later, buried in the village.
"Hiding?" he asks lightly, dropping beside Altair on the bench. "Or eavesdropping, is my guess."
"The novices are nervous. They know this means a war."
"There are always wars, and nervous novices to fight them." Malik nods across the courtyard, where a woman in a purple headscarf and silver-cuffed robe is sweeping. "Better the novices than them. We train the novices. And if you do have to go with them…"
"Not yet."
"I'd think you'd be eager for the chance to do what you love."
"Something is wrong. I can't tell what."
"For one, I don't think it was the whole Mongol army that attacked Izmir. We've had no warnings, no scouts' reports, not to mention no refugees. Probably just their own best-picked men making enough noise to scare off guards at a quiet post."
"So then I was right not to go myself. If the war isn't actually here yet."
"Doubting yourself?"
"No," he snaps. Then he frowns. "But others were. You heard them."
Malik says, "I heard them. And I have one of them running laps up and down the river stairs until he breaks an ankle."
"Tamaam."
"Aafwaan. Try not to push him if you see him. Wouldn't do for the Master to lose his temper."
"Hypocrite."
"I'm not the Master. And you were right not to rise to it, before. Let them see you lead, not doubt. 'We work in the dark', etcetera."
"Sage advice. What are you really here for?"
"To tell you it was a wise decision you made. The men you're sending are good fighters and trustworthy. Whoever's attacking Izmir, they'll handle it."
"Compliments without curses? From you?"
Malik huffs. "Also you're a donkey who should never have reproduced."
"Better."
"I heard Darim asked you if he could also be sent to Izmir."
"Who told you?"
"He did himself. Because afterwards he came to me, hoping I'd override your answer. I didn't, of course. But, Allah's sake, Altair, did you really laugh at him when he asked?"
"He's a boy barely grown into his cowl, wanting to go with my best assassins to battle our greatest enemy. Send a boy to deal with Templars? Laughable. So I laughed."
"I remember once a boy sent himself to deal with Templars," says Malik softly. "He had an angry friend who should have said no but didn't, and the two of them got into so much trouble."
"And that boy came back without a scratch. Without a bruise." Altair touches his lip. "We can't say the same for his friend. A lot of trouble for infamy."
"But that boy would have done anything for infamy. And his friend would have done anything to help. He didn't realize it then, but it's true."
Altair stands up. "The friend was a fool," he says, "the boy a bigger one. Or have you forgotten the scars on your back?"
(The ghost, sitting quietly on the bench at Malik's side, bobs its head. Grins when it sees Altair looking, and flicks its hand as though it held—a whip.)
"Try not to pity yourself," says Malik tiredly, "because it's sort of nauseating."
"You want me to send my son to your fate?"
"I didn't say to send him. I said not to laugh."
"It wasn't Darim's place to ask!"
"You love fighting and you used to trample all over Al Mualim's rules. Your son is you with a different name, don't you see that? Altair, what are you looking at?"
"What do you know? Your son is a baby still. Your son is hardly yours."
Malik, who hasn't risen from the bench, tilts his chin upwards to glare at Altair. The glare, withering though it is, means this is a well-worn battle. Sometimes Altair thinks he picks fights not to win them but to tramp on ground he knows.
Malik says, "My son is my son. And when he asks me as a boy if he can fight Templars, I'll tell him no, but I won't laugh. I won't drive him to do exactly what I don't want. Darim wants to please you, hmar. And he'll do things he shouldn't if he thinks that's what it'll take."
He rises. "And you? I think you've forgotten something worse than my scars. You've forgotten that I've been at your side since we were children, and I know how you are. Be as nasty as you'd like to me. It means the same as it meant whenever you taunted Kadar. If you fear it, if you don't know what to make of it, you push it away. You know the Brotherhood so well, Son of None, but you don't know your Brothers. And you don't know your sons."
"I won't indulge them," Altair says. "I won't lose them." I won't suffer as you did.
"No, you don't indulge much."
Twilight has made way for evening and the sweeping woman has left. Masyaf is quiet, holding its breath. Malik takes a step away but Altair slips after him, ghost-like. "Come tonight," he says. Feeling eyes on his back.
"Not tonight."
"What, even you will disobey your Master?"
Malik stops short and points a warning finger. "Not tonight. For years we hardly nodded at each other and suddenly in the last six months…" Then he softens: "Next week, I might. To hear of news from Izmir."
"Next week," says Altair, and feels his shoulders lift. Next week, then, they'll be alone, because their coupling makes it skittish.
("Next week," says the ghost, unusually somber.)
-i-
Early in the evening, in that dusk-purple of fading sun, and Malik is sitting curled up around the hookah pipe, exchanging breath for the smoke in his lungs, enjoying the buzz of it in his body, the scratch of it in his throat. The lighting is poor, the room cramped, the candles half-drowned by the smoke, but with the ceiling draped with red fabric and the floor buried by plush cushions, it reminds him of Jerusalem. Of the little entrance hall in every bureau, stacked with pillows, equipped with loose stones to store gauze and salve, and a fountain for washing up. He's spent a lot of his adult life in one bureau or another, like any assassin, and he misses the quiet of the one that was his.
But there are some moments that are enough to sooth the yearning. This room is familiar, and because it's built off Altair's quarters no other assassin may enter without invitation. It's been a while since Malik was invited, but the coals are lit and the smoke sweet, and he shrugs off his outer robes in comfort before passing the pipe along.
Argileh ought to be a communal activity, which is probably why Altair's never been any good at it. He either hogs the pipe or forgets to take it back, either lets the coals burn out or the tobacco run low, and he's terrible at the aimless conversation of sated men. He glowers. He picks fights. Once he knocked the pipe over and set a very expensive rug ablaze. Malik's stopped inviting him to village gatherings—the people should see their leader, but Altair isn't really the peasants' leader. He can't be. He doesn't like them.
"This is a waste of time," he says now, though leaning back on his hands he's without his usual bombast.
"You invited me last week," Malik points out, and takes another drag. "I'll enjoy your hospitality, also your food, for as long as you offer it."
Altair eyes the plate by his side, empty but for crumbs and smears of fruit rind. "Should I send for more?"
"If you want."
"I don't."
Malik hands him the pipe. "Then don't." He smiles. "If only all our problems could be solved so quickly. Have you heard yet from Maria?"
"No." Altair's bluntness warns off the conversation. Malik tries a different route:
"How are Darim and Sef? I haven't had time to see them much myself-…"
"Maria was needed on Order business and the Order always comes first. My sons know that. And if they didn't I wouldn't cosset them for their self-pity."
Order business? A half-truth, or barely that. But if Altair knows that Malik knows the other half, he isn't saying.
"Fine. Let us sit here and eat pastries," Malik says lightly, though it doesn't do much for the Grandmaster's scowl.
"The pastries were too dry. And it took more than an hour to get them."
"Angered the cooks, have you?"
"And the messengers." Now Altair frowns for good reason. "I sent a novice with a message about the Izmir situation for the Rafik in from Damascus. It wasn't received. The boy swears he delivered it, the Rafik swears he never saw it."
"Who do you believe?"
"The message was a test, Malik. This isn't the first to have gone astray from that novice. I wasn't sure if he was incompetent, or a traitor. Now I think he's an incompetent being led by other traitors. "
"If you're not going to smoke, pass me back the pipe. You get it all sweaty rolling it in your fingers."
"Did you hear me?"
"We have a traitor. Or a group of them. Or something else. I heard you. Have you used your second sight?"
Altair stares at a tiny singe-mark on the carpet, caused by a loose coal. "It isn't always so clear…"
"What do you mean? You've always been able to use it for hours without a headache."
"That isn't it. Sometimes I think it's less a gift for the talented and more a trick of overconfident minds. We see what we want to see."
"Altair?"
The Grandmaster looks up at him, eyes pensive. "Why should there be liars and rebellions now? The last we heard the Mongols were still far away. We still had time. The war is ending, the Templars are on retreat. Every powerbroker in the Levant knows to play fair or deal with us. And all this under my command. But now Genghis Khan sacks my territory and journeymen question me to my face. Meanwhile any moment now we should hear back from the men I sent to Izmir and yet some of the Dais tell me they haven't heard anyone ever left. Why…?"
Malik shrugs. "There are always liars and rebellions. They follow the scent of real leadership like vultures after an army."
"There weren't any under Al Mualim."
"Maybe there should have been. Besides, what do you call what you did?"
He means it as a joke. A compliment, even. But Altair stiffens so sharply his spine cracks. "I was never a traitor," he snaps. "Master Al Mualim was. I was never a Templar, and I never—what I did was a mistake—"
"I know, Altair. I didn't mean anything by it." Malik holds out the pipe as a peace offering, but Altair is darkly withdrawn, pulled back into himself.
"I don't care if others want to scoff. What do they know? But for my own vanity I'd prefer if you kept silent."
Malik says, "You were never a traitor," and jabs the pipe into the man's closed fist until the Master has no choice but to take it. "All your life you've been hounded by bitter, jealous men. Why listen to one over all the others?"
"You don't give yourself enough credit. We both know what you think, what you said in—"
"Jerusalem was a long time ago," Malik bites out. "I hardly recognize either one of those men. Or remember what they whined about."
"You call it whining? I call it truth. Your truth. For all the years since I've had it beating inside my head."
"Oh, give me some credit to know my own thoughts! I've had plenty of time to remember, Altair, you're not the only one. And at a distance what I thought were flaws in your character look a lot like flaws in my own." Malik takes the pause to lean forward, brush his lips against the Master's. It's almost familiar, at this point, to feel another man's bristled cheek against his own.
"You are not a traitor," he says. "You were stupid and big-headed and you're still the most impatient novice I've ever had to suffer, but never a traitor. Though it would have been easier for me if you were." They stare at each other, at such a close angle it's almost uncomfortable, and Malik is delighted to think the Son of None might blush or babble.
Instead Altair grabs Malik's hand, presses it roughly to his crotch. "Big-headed, eh? I thought that's what you liked."
To his credit Malik babbles not a moment and blushes hardly at all. He pulls his black robes onto his shoulders, draws himself up to his feet, shoulders set and feet spread, frowning regally as a king—and steps on the forgotten plate of pastry crumbs with a squelch of fruit under his heel.
Altair snickers.
Malik peels the plate off his boot. "I think I will ask for more pastries," he says, "if only to cram them down your throat."
The Grandmaster's quarters are secluded but guarded; in Al Mualim's day half a dozen men could be found surrounding the wing, but Altair is too proud and has only a couple assassins watching his door. Usually. Now, as Malik steps out into the hall to ask one of them to send for a messenger-boy, he finds it empty. No white-robed, white-masked figures with heavy swords in callused hands.
He walks down the hall, to where it forks, looks right and left. No one. He walks further still, into a wider stretch, which should be bustling yet isn't. The fortress is deserted.
Malik raises an eyebrow. There should be assassins everywhere, running errands, trying to report on missions to the Master. There should be a crowd of men oceans' deep outside Altair's door, fighting for his attention. And there should be the Grandmaster's guard keeping order. Malik thinks on those men, recalling their names…he can taste the bad omen in the stuffy air. But Altair's guards are chosen carefully by Malik himself. He knows they're dependable. It would take a lot to overtake such men. It would take…
He turns at the footsteps coming towards him. "Ah," he says to the journeyman approaching, "Finally, a sign of life in this place." The journeyman is dressed in grey and red, the usual attire, but also shields his face with an informer's cloth mask. Malik searches the man's hazel eyes, unable to recognize him, trying to remember which journeymen are being trained as informers and if any of them belong in Masyaf and not their trainer's assigned city. "It doesn't bode well," he says slowly, skeptically, "the quiet here. Can't you talk?"
The journeyman's eyes are pained, his fingers stuttering against his hip.
"The Grandmaster's rooms are unguarded," Malik says. "It's disgraceful. You, what's your name? I need to send a message…"
The journeyman's sword swings out in a wild arc. Malik cuts to one side, uses the plate in his hand as a makeshift shield. The journeyman looks perplexed when his sword bites into soft tin and not soft flesh, and looks frightened when Malik dips under his arm, yanking the split tin free in the same motion. He jabs once at the Dai, then again, messy, exhausting thrusts, both hands tight on the grip. Malik sidesteps, clucks his tongue against the back of his teeth.
"Don't let your blade lead you around. You shouldn't have to pray you'll hit me, you should know." The journeyman pauses, arms trembling. "And that sword is too heavy for you. The quartermaster wasn't thinking. Well?" Malik slows. "Stop quivering! You can't take back a punch to a Templar's gut. You chose to attack me, so follow through! Even traitors can fight."
"I'm not a traitor," the man cries. "I obey the true Assassin Master…!" And he lunges, taking too long a stride in his haste.
Malik ducks his blow, steps to the man's front before he can recover and smacks him in the face with the sharp scrap of tin. Cut across his eye, the journeyman yowls in recoil; Malik clucks his tongue again and follows him, slashes his sword arm with the bloody tin so that the sword clatters to the stone, and kicks it out of its owner's reach. Then, tired of fooling, he drops the tin and punches the man in the jaw.
The journeyman hits the wall and slides down it, a pitiful bundle of spit and broken teeth. "Show me your face," Malik orders, and when the man only shudders and doesn't respond, pulls the sodden cloth off himself. The dark face that stares back is so young it's never needed a shave, so raw there are terrified tears on its cheeks.
Malik says, "I know you. A Dai in Egypt sent you here for more training a year ago. I remember that. But you're a novice. I thought as much from your swordwork."
The boy flushes. "That's not what he told me," he says. "He said I was a good fighter and that we'd all be promoted—that we'd all really get what we deserved when the real Master took over—instead of the traitor who stole the throne!"
"What traitor? What throne? Why speak as if you know what happened? You weren't even born."
"He said we should all dress the same," the boy mumbled. "So we'd know. And 'cause we deserved it. The real Master doesn't hog all the praise for himself and his lackeys."
Malik kneels in front of the boy and leans in very close. Close enough that the boy can feel his breath on his neck and shiver. "Who is he? Is it Abbas? This feels like his idiocy."
"Don't insult the Master!"
Malik slips a dagger between his fingers and presses it to the boy's throat. The novice quivers and falls back, but there's still a flash of defiance fighting with the fear in his eyes. Malik has no intentions of actually killing the kid, as pathetic as he is, but only one of them knows that. And he makes sure his steel catches the light.
"Listen to me very closely," he says. "I am the Dai of Jerusalem. I've had sultans writhing on the ground with my daggers in their kneecaps, and I've slit the throats of kings and not thought once about it after. I've killed more men than you have years. Do you hear me? You are not strong and you are not powerful, you are not some mighty warrior, you're hardly even a traitor. You are young and stupid, and I have patience for the young and stupid, but if you don't answer my questions I will decide you are a traitor after all. You don't want be a traitor, if you love your eyes and fingers. Well? Do you?"
The boy has his eyes shut. He swallows, sinking back from the dagger at his throat, and whispers, "Yes."
"Who is he? Whose orders are you following? Abbas?"
"T-The Master is too busy to…I mean, it wasn't him who…he's working with…"
"Who? What Templar has he fallen in with now?"
But the boy works his swollen jaw and bursts out, "It's all lies! You're the evil ones, not the Templars. That's what they told us! Altair sold his soul to Satan, and all you did was...you're a cripple and a coward. You let your brother die so you could keep being the Son of None's faggot!"
Malik stiffens. "What?"
"You can't spit on the Brotherhood anymore, you can't ignore us just 'cause we're novices. We're going to save the Order from you traitors, just like Ali said."
"Ali? Listen, you little fool…"
"I'm not a fool!" the boy shrieks. "I'm an assassin! Ali said we'd get what we deserved!" And like any novice, any child who's watched his betters and thinks himself their match, the boy lifts a shoulder and tries to break free. But no one's taught him this move. Instead of knocking the dagger aside he only thrusts himself awkwardly to the side, off-center and off-balance, and Malik, incredulous, tries to pull his hand out of the way but the boy catches him off-guard.
The knife's edge spears the boy and parts the skin tenderly as a man parts his lover's hair. Blood spurts, the blade halfway gone, halfway inside a boy who opens his mouth to howl and scares himself with his own frog's croaking. Blood spurts over the Dai's wrist and chest. "Stop moving!" he bellows, trying to hold the knife steady, afraid that if he drops it it'll gore the novice completely, "stop moving and I'll pull it out, it's a shallow thing, stop-" because a man can live with a cut throat if the cut can be kept from certain areas, certain depths, if the blood can be staunched a man can survive, but this isn't a man at all, just a boy who sobs and in his animal panic tries to stand and only rips the knife in further down.
Malik reaches out to hold him still with an arm that isn't there.
In the space of nothing, in a measly five seconds it happens: the soft throat, the artery against the blade.
The boy, sprawled out in his ridiculous journeyman robes—they don't even fit!—gurgles and twitches, wide-eyed. Malik throws the knife away and presses his hand to the bubbling wound.
He has done this before, felt the warm blood pump through his fingers, seen the white creep into the lips. He has waited while the blood turned sluggish and thick, and like a fool called it the body healing. He has watched the thrashing turn to panting turn to muscles spasming their last, then locking into place. He's carried the flaking brown tack under his fingernails for days.
You're an assassin, right? You can bear it.
Malik lets the boy stare at him, then through him. The little fool, hurling himself into a knife blade, what was it he'd killed himself to say? Ali said…?
The fortress isn't silent any longer; he can hear shouting in the distance, from beyond the thick stone. Malik leaves the body where it is, tugs his black robes to cover some of the bloodstains on the white, and unsheathes his sword.
"Assassins killing assassins!" he says. "A waste!"
The hall to Altair's rooms is still empty, but his door is smashed. Malik steps over the wreckage, sees the sparse furniture thrown about and Altair in the middle of it, cowl raised, jaw locked. Three men—no, four—lie at his feet. Two are groaning, one is unconscious, and one will never groan again. All are wearing masks.
"Altair," says Malik. "Abbas has corrupted the novices. He…" Altair grunts, looking at him, tracing the bloodstains with his eyes. Then he stalks over and starts tracing them with his hands. Malik bats him aside, impatient. "Stop, it's not mine."
The Grandmaster steps back. Nods. "They came barreling in here, calling me turncoat," he says. "Shouting their allegiance to Abbas." He frowns. "I think they've killed my guards. Those men deserved to die for a cause with honor. The day his mother kept him instead of the afterbirth was the last time Abbas had any."
"It's not only Abbas. This is too well-planned for him. The boy in the hallway, he said his orders came from Ali-…but those men aren't novices." Malik stares at the assassins Altair's beaten. One of them he recognizes as an instructor of some skill, about to be assigned to Damascus's bureau. Another, Altair has pointed out as someone with Master Assassin potential. "I thought it was only…"
"Who said anything about novices?"
"I can see Abbas tricking the novices with grand promises and pretty uniforms. Men like these wouldn't fall for it."
Altair says calmly, "Men like these believe I am a traitor."
"He can't have gotten to the entire Order, not so quickly."
"Come on," says Altair, tosses his head. It seems laughable, looking at him now, that anyone should think they could pry the Grandmaster's robes from his frame. His rank is molded to him, burned to his skin. He leads the way out of the room, out of the hall, to a set of doors that open onto a balcony large enough for two to stand if they angle it right. From here they can look out on the main courtyard, the fortress walls and the village beyond.
From nowhere the fighting has erupted, and it is everywhere at once.
The courtyard is awash with Brothers fighting Brothers, but no longer are the blows kept to the ring, and no longer are they for practice. Bodies litter the ground, men curled up on themselves, men stretched out and staring. This is not the first time violence has reached the heart of the Order, but to see it carried out by assassins-! Those aren't Englishmen dead under the sun, and those aren't Templar crosses on their chests.
"Fuck," says Altair, but he says it almost without feeling. "How did Abbas stir this up so fast?"
"It must have been brewing…we knew something was brewing but not what…" Malik risks a look at the Grandmaster. He is furious, to be certain, white-lipped with it, but he leans his whole body towards the fighting and his hidden blade pops out between his fingers, slides away, pops out again. He is excited. Cooped up in his fortress controlling other men is not what he loves, and Malik is reminded looking at him now that what he loves has never been a person. He trusts war, he works well in it. And, perhaps feeling neglected, war has come to find him.
"Come on," says Malik. "We have to get down there. You have to rally the men."
"Which men? They are all my men. How will I trust anyone to fight for me?"
"The masks. The novice I killed mentioned they were all dressed alike, probably to tell themselves apart. Anyone whose uniform doesn't call for a mask is a traitor."
"Fine," says Altair. Malik slides out of the little balcony, to let Altair pass, but the eagle of Masyaf has other ideas. He jumps onto the railing with easy grace that belies his age, balances, tracks the mayhem below with those predator's eyes, and leaps.
Malik rushes to the railing. It's four stories to the ground below, and there aren't any piles of hay below. Altair, however, doesn't need hay. He lands on a masked assassin, rolling them both over on the ground with the force of the fall, and when he slides back to his feet he does so alone and his hidden blade is red to the hilt.
"The Master is here," someone cries.
"Altair!"
"The Master!"
"Kill the traitor!"
Malik, still separate from the fighting, tries to think. The fighting is spread out past the fortress, into the village, and that means civilians are involved. How many assassins were born in Masyaf? How many might have siblings, parents, friends, come rushing out to defend them? Has Abbas warned his men not to touch the villagers? Somehow Malik doubts it.
Damn it all, how many are his men? The battle seems even-matched, with loyal assassins perhaps the stronger force, but not by much. And here, in the Order's heart, they should be the strongest. They should overwhelm. The fools, Malik rages, the sheep, they kill their Brothers because Altair hurts their pride! When he saved the Brotherhood! When he saved them all!
Altair finds purchase on an overturned cart, spears a man through the gut (it is no different killing Brothers, Malik knows. He's done it before and the earth never quakes), stands with his robes cutting at his knees, and says in a roar that they will have heard in Damascus, "I am the Grandmaster of the Assassin Brotherhood. You will not challenge me. Lay your swords down now and live, or else I suggest you run."
No one listens, of course. But it's a good speech. Malik nods.
He thinks again of the villagers, the border guards who will be wondering what has happened, the many novices who are in no position to handle this fight. Discovering the depths of Abbas's folly (are the other cities secure? are the Templars involved?) will have to wait. For now Altair must defend his position at the center, and Malik must support him from the background once again.
He leaves the balcony, runs for a staircase he knows that will lead him to a back courtyard, and from there the main hall. It and its secrets, its paperwork, its back garden, must be secured. But before he can reach the stairs he sees a masked man lunge for him out of the corner of his eye. His palm slides up the grip of his sword to the cross-guard, and he butts the pommel into the man's stomach, then brings down the blade on the back of the man's neck. But the dull edge, and though the man collapses he still breathes.
There is no difference in killing Brothers, but oh, it is a shame.
Again he runs for the stairs and again there are assassins to get in his way. Again and again he slices off limbs or into stomachs, no stealth here, and he has the added burden of remembering to guard his left side. Some men he knocks unconscious, but some he has no choice but to kill. And though Malik has trained to the brink of collapse for just such a reason, his arm is beginning to ache.
The hall curves left towards the doorway he wants, but beyond a door to the right he hears, "If you are not with us you are against us!" and moves that way instead. The door leads him to a wide room filled with chairs and bookshelves, all tipped over and in splinters now: a scholar's workspace. No less than six masked men are trying to bash their way through another door, heavy wood, on the room's far side. One of them hangs back, and when Malik enters he is saying, "But this is not the Creed…"
"You heard what the Master said, a traitor's a traitor," grunts another. "Everything's permitted. You little bastards, open up!"
"Stop," says Malik. The six all turn to look. In their haste to rush him they get in each other's way and he picks them off with ease—swords are his namesake but throwing knives his specialty, and he has worked around his disability so that he doesn't need to put his sword away to aim his daggers well. Four find their marks, one misses. They are assassins, though, and it takes some time to bring them all down.
The sixth man, alone among the survivors, cowers against the wooden door, arm dangling and useless with a dagger protruding from the bicep. "Move," Malik tells him, and he scurries to the side.
Malik bangs on the door, hears a gasp and a whisper, cracks at it until the handle breaks and the door peels open. With his sword at the ready he peers into what turns out to be a darkened closet space, hardly big enough for the four novices crammed shoulder-to-shoulder inside. For a second they stare at each other, the Order's second and the novice assassins: young boys all of them, one blond, one dark-skinned with light blue eyes, two freckled and obviously related. They have short swords out but the blades shake so badly they practically hum, and only one of them is holding his correctly.
"…My lord?" whispers one of them, recognizing the robes. "What's happening?"
Malik tastes his anger in metal flakes on his tongue. "Assassins kill children? This is what you leaned from the Creed? Then we have failed for real—" Rage turns him around and he would strangle the assassin…but the man has fled without a sound while Malik's back was turned, leaving nothing but a spot of blood. Malik lets out a noisy breath. Tricky, fighting men who've learned the same tricks.
"My lord? They said, they said there was a new Grandmaster, and they said…"
"Run," Malik tells them. "Take the back stairs out of the fortress and the trail to the river. Follow it away from Masyaf to the next—no, not the next village, it's too close. Go past the last watchtowers, then wait for orders. And if you see other novices, or villagers, tell them to do the same."
"But I've never left Masyaf," wails the novice with blue eyes, at the same time as the older of the freckled boys says he's an assassin and wants to stay to fight.
Malik says, "This is your first mission. The Brotherhood counts on you."
He watches them scurry out, gnawing at his inner lip. There, he has his answer. Those who are not for Abbas are against him. Villagers, novices, old scholar greybeards. A true coup. And should he win, who then would he cull? Would he have Sunni flee from Shi'a? Christian from Muslim? Would he bother to fight Templars as has always been the Brotherhood's mission, or would he forget himself in his own grudges? The women of the Master's garden, the women of the nearby brothel, any man who has ever called Altair a friend…
He must not win.
Someone in the hallway screams.
The novices are bunched together, still steps off from the stairs, and a massive man, arms rippled with muscle, flat face drenched in beard, approaches them from the stairwell wielding an axe. An axe, of all things. He's dressed not in assassin garb but in a black djellaba and heavy boots. Malik swears and only just manages to make the axe hit his blade and not the blond novice's skull. The force sends him staggering, rips the sword from his hand. The human monster lifts his axe above his head and hurtles it down towards Malik's head.
Malik ducks underneath it, drops to his knees, wrenches his short blade from its sheath and stabs up, aiming along the pointed crook of his elbow. It bites into the man deep, but such a monster won't be felled by one blow and that axe is too much for any sword to deflect. One of the novices picks up Malik's sword but can barely heft it off the ground. "Master," he cries.
"Run," Malik shouts at them again, and then gags at the knee in his stomach that throws him back. His whole body contracts with pain and a swell of stomach acid rolls past his teeth. At the last second he manages to stumble onto his feet before he falls. The mountain lumbers for him, grinning a blackened smile: Malik hits him twice with knives, in his throat and cheek, grabs his sword back from the novice and chops off the man's hand.
Only when he is sure the man has bled out does he let himself drop to one knee. His stomach feels like it's been punched out his back. The novices, frightened, cluster at his shoulder. "The stairs," Malik starts to say, but then he hears voices coming from that direction, and footfalls, and more screams.
"To the main courtyard," he coughs out. "Down the other way. Quickly!" He pushes himself to his feet and follows after.
"Who was that?" the blond novice asks him, clearly frightened by the sheer size of the axe.
"No assassin," says Malik grimly. "I need to tell the Grandmaster," he says, distracted, telling himself that he would know already if Altair had been brought down.
"Where is the Grandmaster? We really need him…" The novice stammers out a laugh. "I thought for a minute that you might be him…?"
"Me? No, I…have you ever seen Master Altair?"
A shrug. "Once or twice, in the back of a crowd. Never close." The others murmur agreement. "Lord? Why are you making that face?"
"Never mind," Malik tells him. "We reap what we sow!"
Through the fortress they hurry, to the courtyard, in a maelstrom of violence that follows them wherever they go. Several times they must stop to clear the way, and the novices help as best they can but Malik knows he can't guard them forever. Blood slicks his hand and face. Finally they find the ground floor, and a door out. Malik takes it at a run, thrusts his sword through a masked man's shoulder blades before he thinks to turn around, and lets the momentum carry them both outside, where if anything the chaos is worse. Men fight in groups, two or three against three or four. It's painfully obvious that while the masked men know their uniform, the others are still confused. An assassin grabs at a friend for support only to have that friend break his neck. The confusion spreads fright, as men turn 'round in circles unsure of who to fight.
"Brother!" men yell. "Comrade! Traitor! No!"
Among the bodies littering the cobblestones are several older men, scholars too far removed from swordfights, and Malik can only hope the rest were able to hide. He recognizes the corpse of one of Rauf's assistant instructors, stretched out over the side of the training ring, belly gaping. The man's face is masked, but his uniform always calls for a mask, so who knows which side killed him, or why.
Who he doesn't see is Altair, or Abbas for that matter. Thankfully none of the novices are panicking, a testament to their schooling, and he starts to lead them around the outskirts of the battle, hoping for a clearer path past the walls. They get five steps and then a man falls screaming from above and dies at Malik's feet.
The Dai looks up and sees, on the wall's thick ramparts, a scattering of dead guards, a larger rush of living ones, and Altair in the center, calmly hacking his way through.
Some men stand with him, to defend their Master, and he lets them. Others approach as if to assist but are treated like the enemy and slaughtered. And not all of those are wearing masks. "What are you doing?" Malik yells to him, pointless for his voice is swallowed by the din. "How can you tell exactly who to kill?"
But it's the blond novice, gazing upwards with naked awe, who answers. "His eyes," the boy breathes, eyes shining. Behind him his friends are watching Altair slay three men at once, slack-jawed with shock. "It's his eyes, Lord. Everyone says the Master can see things the rest of us can't. He can read minds!"
"His eyes?" His Eagle's Vision? Stunned himself, Malik squints. The courtyard descends into a mass of writhing red-on-blue, veins running through a heaving base like a pustule spread wetly over the courtyard, flecked in spots by the grey of the background world. The red seethes and it's hard to make out distinct forms within its agitated churning. For every blue figure there are two red blurs closing in—and, God, the headache Malik gets from using second sight! He drags it out another second and then has to let it drop.
Could Altair possibly fight with it? Is he able to keep it on for so long without strain?
The crowd on the rampart has thinned and Altair takes off down the stone pathway. "Where is he going?" the blue-eyed novice cries.
"To the village," Malik says. "And we will follow. Stay close!"
Though he wanted to reach the main hall the novices have become his priority, and he leads them through the courtyard at a pace that makes him grit his teeth. So many men! So many blasted mercenaries, for that is what they are, unchecked barbarians, crushing the skulls of the injured and disarmed. Malik fights to kill now, because there's no time left for sympathy. Not when Altair is headed for the village, and for the carnage he must have seen from up top that drew him out. The Dai knows his robes are recognized, and his face, and his missing arm: he knows that's why men come at him one after another, to wear him down. The novices are defending him by now as much as he defends them. They're quick learners, and there's no other way.
Occasionally he flashes the second sight, to choose a direction, to assure himself of a fatal blow. But it's never been his to use the way it is Altair's, and it's not instinctive either. Any longer than a second and his head feels like to burst. Still it gets Malik's little group to the stone gates—Abbas's post, though he isn't guarding it so well today—and then outside them. There's a man bent against the stones, catching his breath, and Malik lifts his sword, but the man bows deeply and waves them through.
A second after they've reached the outside path, Altair drops off the archway, landing in a messy crouch in front of them, off to the side where the walls provide a moment of refuge. Malik takes a step forward, thinking it was on purpose, but then spots the notched arrow sticking out to the left of his spine.
"Altair!" He reaches out his hand, which Altair bats away.
"It's nothing," he barks, face twisted with pain, and reaches over his shoulder to pull the arrow out. A thin line of blood follows, and he grunts as the arrow head pops from his skin; he throws it to the ground, rolling his shoulder with a grimace. "Archers on the roofs," he says, disgusted. "Abbas has thought of everything."
"This is a disaster. We're fighting an army. Are you alright?"
"Fine. Busy!"
"You're wobbling where you stand."
"Shut up."
"It's your Eagle's Vision, isn't it? To use it so long is nauseating."
"For you, maybe. Malik, the village is swarmed."
"I figured, and those loyal don't know who to fight."
The blue-eyed novice pipes up, "Are the villagers safe?" His face is bloodied and soot-smeared, his lip bleeding down his chin. His fellow novices are all too dumbstruck to say anything in the presence of the Master. "My parents live in Masyaf. Are they…?"
Altair throws him a spare glance. Malik says, "Abbas has no cause to hurt civilians. I'm sure they're alright."
From behind Altair someone says, "Hard to say the same for us!"
Altair whirls, sees the mask and lashes out, grabbing the interloper by the neck with both hands. Malik sees the harried eyes, one swollen shut, from under the hood, and knows them, but also sees the mask. He thinks, Allah's sake, Rauf, not you too!
Rauf scrabbles at Altair's hands and squeaks out, "Safety and peace! Or at least safety!" Altair eyes him a second longer, no doubt using his second sight to make sure, then lets him go. Malik lets out his breath, relieved, though not as relieved as Rauf, who rubs his throat with a hapless air. "How could I turn against you?" he babbles. "You're my friends. I swore my oath!"
"Do us a favor, Rauf," says Malik. "Take off the face mask."
"Sorry, sorry. I didn't realize…" He does so. "I'm glad I found you, Brothers. I've lost near everyone else!"
"Have you reached the village?"
"Yes, and it's as bad as it is here. Plenty of assassins, but that doesn't mean what it did yesterday, huh? This must have been planned for a year, I swear, they've covered every angle. It's like fighting our shadow."
"The villagers?"
"Hiding, mostly, or fled. The, the assassins, uh, the bad assassins—what the hell do I call them?—don't seem interested in them right now."
"You call them cowards and traitors," says Altair. He's pacing like a lion again, shoulders hunched slightly. Every turncoat assassin is a reflection on his rule, a snicker to his face, a voice calling him half-breed. He has never dealt well with that.
Rauf asks, strained, "Grandmaster, what are your orders? We can't hold them off forever. I don't even know how to tell we from they to begin with."
Malik says, "Some men must have stayed loyal. Who's stationed at the village gates? There's Qadir…"
"Still defending his post last I saw him. I sent some students I trust to help."
"Good. Rabi?"
"Dead an hour."
"Damn. Really? What about Nasr?"
Rauf says dourly, "I haven't seen him since he killed Rabi."
"Fuck his mother," Altair announces.
"You know, I always said Nasr was a bit of a shithead. I don't understand it, though. Even if half the Order has pus for brains, which is embarrassing enough, it still feels like they have too many men."
"Because they do," Malik says, groaning with the realization. "Your best fighters, Altair, all those men you sent to Izmir on behalf of poor, weeping Ali! A lot of good they'll do there."
"And Abbas's extra men?"
"It's mercenaries. Abbas has brought mercenaries to the fortress to fatten his ranks."
"No respect," cries Rauf, "no honor-…wait…Abbas?" He looks from man to man, even from novice to novice, and worries the mask he holds in his hands. "This is Abbas's doing?"
"Who else?"
"Well, there are plenty else who—" Wisely Rauf doesn't finish that thought. "But this is so organized, so, so insidious. It's not his style."
"His assassins call him Master," says Malik, not without gentleness, because he knows how close Rauf and Abbas once were. "I don't doubt he's had help planning, but it's him who's caused it all."
"Oh. I guess I never thought…it's just…he was so proud to call himself an assassin, I figured that meant he wouldn't…"
Altair says, "Abbas is a cur who should have been drowned at birth. There's nothing in him but shit and bad ideas."
"He's our Brother, though," Rauf says quietly. "Or at least he was."
"Yela'an mayteen ahlak," says Altair. "Damn the dead of his family."
Rauf colors. For a second, just a second, anger flashes through his eyes. "Well, then he knows how we fight and how we react. He knows the Creed same as we. And not everyone will be so quick to lift a sword to their companion from childhood. What do we do?"
The answer comes almost instantly: a band of masked men finds them behind the stone arch's shelter and attacks. Malik hooks the closest one with the tip of his sword, pulls him off his feet, shakes loose and brings his blade down on the back of the man's neck. Behind him Rauf is clanging swords with a mercenary twice his size, taunting, "Seems you don't fully understand what it is to wield a blade!" Altair has his hidden blade in one man's throat and his short sword in a second's ribs. The novices have ganged up, two to a man, and are actually doing quite well.
Then one of the enemies, a mercenary in a vest of crude-stitched animal hides, drops a small glass vial. A foul stench and plum of smoke waft up when the vial breaks against the ground. Malik fumes, forced to fight blind. Assassins never use poisons, not when battling man-to-man: there's no honor in such a thing. Out of the smoke a pair of hands grab at him, but they grab at the wrong side, grab a bit of pinned sleeve instead of arm. It's almost funny. Meanwhile Altair isn't slowed down a second, much to the horror of his opponents, because Eagle's Vision is beyond a paltry smoke screen.
But the novices are neither so talented nor so trained. The smoke and smell fade quickly, but before they do there's a sound like twigs snapping and a squeal.
When they've cleared a space Altair motions them over, past the cement storage building that sits between the side of the cliff and the path. Beyond it is a large mound of hay, and once Malik brings down an assassin shooting arrows from the top of the building, the hay makes an adequate spot to duck behind and take stock. Rauf prods inside his mouth with a dirty finger until he finds a tooth knocked almost entirely loose and, with a wince, tears it out. He spits blood and grumbles. Altair is, as usual, fine (though the back of his black robes are torn and through the rip one can see a sticky mess of white cloth and blood). Malik has an assortment of cuts and bruises that he stalwartly ignores, plus the beginnings of a fantastic headache.
The blond novice, however, is in a bad way. His arm has been so badly broken that the skin bulges around the bone, and he's swooned with pain. His good arm thrown around the blue-eyed novice's neck is the only thing keeping him upright.
"Rauf," Malik says, "you need to get them out of Masyaf. They can't fight like this forever."
Mutters Rauf, "And the rest of us can?"
"They're in more danger while they're near Altair and me than they would be on their own. Make sure they're safe. Take them beyond the farthest watchtowers."
"Of course. And then?"
"Ah…talk to the men there, if there are still men there. We need reinforcements. If we can bring in extra arms from outside…"
"Yes, I'll-…oh! No, I can't!"
"What? Rauf, what are you talking about? There's no time for arguing, we—"
Rauf grabs at his shirtfront, wide-eyed and white-faced beneath his beard. Behind him Altair hackles, and Malik has to awkwardly wave him aside. "Don't you realize?" the frantic swordsman shouts. "If it's true that Abbas has done this, then I cannot stay at the watchtower! And you cannot stay here! The village…I need to get to the mountain village."
"We haven't even secured this place and you want to worry about that one? Al Masyaf is the Brotherhood's headquarters, this is where the fight is…"
"Dima is in the other village! I must protect her."
Altair growls, "I don't think Abbas's problems are with your whore."
Rauf laughs, faint and sickly. "Abbas's problems are with me! With us! He is a jealous man, he's always been, you know that, and it distracts him. Even now I guarantee you he's too busy plotting revenge to win the fight. When he learns that I've sided against him he will want to kill me, and when he can't find me he will find her."
One of the freckled novices says weakly, "But that's not allowed by the Creed. That's not our way." Rauf laughs again, the same sick choke of a noise.
"That is his way. That is the way of these mercenaries he's using. Altair, Malik, I must find Dima before he does. And you—you must find your children."
And just like that, the world falls as silent as the grave.
Malik puts a hand to his throat to convince himself that his lungs are working. At his shoulder Altair goes very still.
You must find your children and he hadn't even thought—no assassin would ever attack a target's family—this is a Templar thing, a Crusader thing, this is the sort of thing over which a king must worry—oh, God, he's been so consumed by saving the Order, by winning the battle, by covering for his missing arm, and all the while he's been so open with his weak points and Abbas, Abbas will know, Abbas will read him and know that Malik's dropped himself too deeply into his role as second…
He is on his feet. He is thinking that Tazim will be in his nursemaid's room. He is shouting at Altair over the heads of bewildered boy assassins, "When did you last see Darim and Sef?"
Altair has this whole time been cowled and removed. Now he lifts a hand to his forehead—a hand with shaking fingers—and brushes it back. His naked hair, mussed with sweat, is strange to see. He looks up at Malik from his crouched position and his eyes look black with fear and fury. "Early in the morning, before breakfast," he says. "I roused Sef so that he wouldn't spend the whole day in bed and sent him to the training yard. To work with throwing knives with the rest of his agemates. Darim went with him."
Rauf says, "That ring is near the gates and the river passage. It was empty when I passed it, of bodies living or dead. I'm sure they've all escaped." He turns anxiously to Malik. "And Tazim? Where is he?"
"He…" Malik drops his sword, presses his hand to his head. How could he not have thought of this? How is he not prepared? "With his wet nurse in the fortress—no! One of her own was feeling poorly, she asked to take Tazim to her own house for the day. I sent guards…"
"Trusted guards?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then if the nurse hasn't fled already he must be there. And it will take Abbas a long time to realize."
Malik picks up his sword again and gets to his feet. "Rauf, take the novices to safety and then do what you must to help Dima. I'm going to find my son. And Altair, you should…"
But Altair is gone.
"Left to find help," says the blue-eyed novice, quietly, still bent under the weight of his unconscious friend. "Or to help everyone else."
"Or to smash through Masyaf like a wounded cow looking for his sons." Malik shakes his head. "He'll keep himself alive. The rest of you, go!"
"Yes—but, Malik," Rauf pauses. "What should I tell the others? They're confused, they need to hear from their leader."
"Tell them to fight as long as they can. Spare their disloyal Brothers only if it's possible. And wait for word from the Grandmaster."
"Yes. Altair will rally them, he will."
"We'll meet soon. Go!" Malik steps out from the mound of hay to draw the arrows, batting a few close calls aside with his blade, the snap of the contact singing in his hands. He darts closer to the storage building, throwing knives at the archers, and waits until he's sure Rauf has gotten the novices away. Then he runs.
Down the winding pathway. Past men locked in their hated. Past villagers cowering in the weeds, under benches. Past the first signs of fire sparked from who knows where… Past the tattered flags of his Order, waving from the cliffs.
Arrows swipe at his shoulders, buzz past his ear. A man reaches for him and he throws a knife into his gut, then jumps onto and over the man when he falls. Malik runs until the path curves down but he does not curve with it, he only speeds his gait, and leaps a body and the retaining wall both, scattering hay and a lost pigeon, hurtles downwards from Masyaf's upper level in a leap of faith. Below on the second level, nestled between the walls, another pile of hay cushions his landing and springs his step. The nursemaid's house is just ahead, halfway down the narrow road that leads back to the main path, under the shade of a ragged palm. But the tree has been felled, he sees as he comes near it, splintered low at the skinny trunk.
There are no guards outside the cottage. No people of any type. The whole row of houses looks deserted. The door is unlatched and swings open at his lightest touch.
"Tazim," Malik calls, and he thinks that a father's voice should be strong enough to carry itself wherever it is needed, to reach into all the crags of the world, to plumb the depths of every space or sea. He thinks that his own father must have called for him once in just such a way, and must have sounded just as old.
The cottage is small, like most of them in Masyaf, just one room divided into several by a housewife clever with sheets. There was a meal laid out on a low table but the table has been upended and the food lies scattered on the dirt floor. There is a candle in a holder, on a ledge cut into the wall, smoking furiously. There is a bed, solid, too nice and too large for the space, and it looks ransacked, sheets tangled on the floor, straw mattress knocked half-off. There is a cradle, a fine thing, carved and solid as the bed, bought by Malik himself some months ago off a merchant. That cradle came all the way from Damascus and cost more than Altair would be pleased to know. It sits empty now.
Malik walks to it, puts his hand on the edge, presses himself against it. No blood on the cradle, but no baby either. And no guards at the door…
"No," says Malik, very softly, barely a breath, and hears his father calling him again. "I refuse it," says Malik, who cannot protect his own. "I warned you!"
The litany may be self-pity, but that makes it mighty, not weak. His home gone and he saw it, saw the ending of his childhood while cowering behind a rock. His brother gone and he couldn't stop it, could only hold the body, bear the weight. His arm gone and he caused it, a sacrifice to old gods, a hole in him to match the one no one could see.
And then Tazim…and now his son…
He kicks the cradle so that it rocks, kicks it again with full strength and sends it crashing onto its side. He bellows with it, the crash loud and his screaming louder, and almost misses the voice at his back.
"Dai Malik? My lord?"
He whirls ungracefully around, too heavy in his damn robes, too burdened with weapons, and useless weapons at that: they kill but cannot rescue. Will it be Abbas behind him? Will it be a masked assassin? Will it be someone he can tear to meaty shreds between his fingers?
"My God," says Raed, stepping forward. "I thought I saw you come in here." He's limping slightly, large rents down the front of his shirt, but he moves carefully, every step thought out, and he leans over ever-so to protect the sleeping child in his arms. "I reached here just in time. The woman and her family are headed for the river passage but I wasn't sure I'd make it without full use of my arms."
Malik isn't listening. He is rooted to the spot. Raed, with eyes softening, holds Tazim out to him. "Here. He's fine. Never even woke up."
"Safe," echoes Malik. He must drop his sword to take Tazim. He does so without thought. Only when the bundle is in his grasp, only when he can look down upon his son, does his heart again begin to move. Amazing, fatherhood: his child of someone else's line controls Malik's very body. "Raed," he tries, then stops. Shakes his head with the wonder of it. Outside men are dying but in here time has stilled.
"Raed, how did you even know to come here? Why did you?"
"It's an informer's duty to know."
"To risk his life for someone else's son? Is that his duty also?"
"I don't know," says Raed. "I asked you once but you never answered."
"Oh, Allah's sake, Raed, oh, fuck. That debt is repaid! I think I'm in your debt now, I think I shall indenture myself to you for an eternity, I think…"
Raed smiles slightly. "Did I tell you? My son's engaged to be married."
"Oh, well, that's…"
"How do you fulfill that debt, Malik? It isn't just one life. A generation, an entire future has been saved."
All Malik can think to do is stand there, helpless, holding his son.
Raed says, "We shouldn't linger here. I don't know that our battle is going very well."
"I need to get back out there. But Tazim…he can't stay with me, Raed. Not even for a minute. I'm too great a target."
"Don't worry, I'll take him. I have men waiting outside who can help guard the way."
"Yes, thank you." Giving his son back, Malik is struck by both relief and pain. Tazim must be cared for, this once-abandoned child, and Malik ensures this by refusing to be the one to do it. He cannot both fight and protect, though he tried that once. He's wiser now.
Malik gives his son to another man and wishes there was a god he believed in, a god who might look with favor on them both.
-i-
Raed is wrong about the balance of his debt to Malik. He is not wrong about much else.
The battle is nearing a rout. Though he flings himself into it from the moment Tazim is gone, enemies seem to sprout from the corpses of their brethren. So many men have fallen for Abbas's lies. So many men refuse to honor their oaths, their Creed. To kill them, to kill men he knows by name, men he's taken meals alongside, men he's grown up with—to do this again and again would be unbearable for a weaker man. To see that assassins would rather kill their Master then be beholden to him is a potent hurt.
Malik is tiring; he feels it in the throb of his arm and the dip of his sword. It makes his thinking slow, his planning sloppy, gets him backed up against another railing with several men bearing down. He's out of throwing knives, isn't sure he'd be able to aim one properly if he had it. The only option is to jump again, from second level to first. He lands on a rooftop this time, and it's a bad landing, leaves him squinting and winded on one knee. Someone else thuds onto the roof beside him, and he looks up expecting a mercenary but finds Altair there instead.
The Grandmaster isn't wearing his black robes anymore. He's stripped down to his purest element, red sash against white, and as his fingers tug impatiently at Malik's shoulder, pulling him to his feet, his gaze settles beyond.
Malik says, breathlessly, "Did you find Sef and Darim? Altair, did you?"
Altair shakes his head. Points down, past their feet. He has not found his sons, but he has found someone else.
Peering from behind a two-story stone building, watching the fracas but staying separate from it: Abbas. And frizz-haired Ali shadowing his shoulder.
Altair smirks, and in it Malik reads: the coward. For that is what Abbas is. To send others to fight while he ducks behind to observe, what other name is there for that? Not that bravery would help him win a swords match against the Son of None. Altair adjusts his cowl and leaps forward.
"Wait!" Malik leaps after him, spanning the rooftops in silent stretches, and catches up when they are only a few buildings away. He grabs Altair's shoulder and pulls them both into a covered roof garden, where they can talk with some secrecy.
Altair knocks off his grip. "What are you doing?"
"As ever, trying to talk sense into you."
"Kill Abbas and his uprising ends. He's right there. Another second and I'll have him!"
"Yes, right there indeed. He's surrounded himself by buildings when his opponent climbs like a lizard and wields a hidden blade. And he knows that."
"You're saying it's a trap?"
There isn't much room inside the wooden structure, and they don't dare talk above whispers; Malik must lean against the other man to make sure his meaning holds. "I'm saying Abbas has been taught to fight just as we do. There will be archers on every balcony and every roof."
"I don't see any."
"Oh, an assassin you can't find? Must mean there aren't any! No assassin would ever do something like, oh, I don't know, hide."
"Then what would you have us do?"
"We wait. We see who he has protecting him."
"There isn't time."
"Patience, Altair, must I remind you again."
"He is killing my sons!" Altair falters, talks angrily over himself. "My men, I mean, he's cutting them down. This can't go on forever."
"I'm not saying we hide here forever. I'm saying we wait until we have some semblance of a plan beyond rushing in for a 'secret' kill after the secret's already been given up."
Occasionally even Altair learns something, and he subsides in the wake of Malik's sarcasm, leaning back on his heels. Only for a moment, though. Then something weird takes his face and warps it, some unnatural light finds his eyes and makes them glint. "Fine," he says, in a voice that is and isn't his, "Then we'll try another way."
From a pouch tucked into his robes he pulls out the Apple of Eden. It swallows the space, is utterly too big for it: the air is pressed when it appears. Malik doesn't like how Altair tangles his fingers around the orb's golden slickness.
"You have that thing with you?" he hisses. "Don't even consider it, Altair. Put it away."
Altair doesn't appear to have heard. "With this it won't matter what they expect," he says. His smile is too stretched, too wide. His breathing is too rapid. "Don't you remember how much damage it did for Al Mualim? And I have had far longer to work with it. No archer will be enough to stop the Apple."
"You promised me you'd never use it in battle! Especially not on our own men."
"These aren't our men, Malik. These are traitors. Abbas's ilk! What does it matter how we kill them? Is a slit throat any kinder to a dead man once he's choked?"
(But Malik remembers white hands on his shoulders, remembers the rush of power bringing with it pleasure too, remembers a boy-soldier weeping for his life in a puddle of his own piss…remembers looking up with some bemusement, as if stirring from a dwindling dream, to find his brother still dead and his own arm falling to rotten chunks against the floor.)
"You remember," he says, "with knives and swords. That is the burden of being an assassin. You don't have a chance to hide from the blood on your hands. The Apple isn't like that, it's not merely a tool to be used. It's a djinn-weapon and it uses you!"
"Superstitious nonsense."
"You made me a promise," says Malik in a very low voice. "Don't make me a fool."
Altair looks at him for a long while. Malik meets the Son of None's eyes and in them sees all that they are: friends and lovers, enemies also. For the second time today his heart refuses to beat. Does he know Altair? Will he be able to recognize the man for whom he's sacrificed, in another second's time?
The Apple hangs between them, waiting. Patient.
Altair says at last: "Fine. Though I think you enjoy making my life more difficult," and lowers his hand. Malik, with a relief so broad it's painful, laughs.
"Just put it away. Surely Grandmaster Altair can kill Abbas with his own hands."
"Did I say I couldn't? He'd be dead already if you hadn't stopped me." Altair rummages around for the pouch, distracted. He holds the Apple up again, shoving it under Malik's nose, just to pout a little more, and says, "If you'd ever used this I think you'd understand what it can do—"
The roof garden's curtain is split by arrows. The first flicks into the back of Altair's hand, the second deep enough into the meat of his forearm to catch. The force of them snaps the Apple out of his grasp, flings it from the roof garden. A third arrow grazing Altair's shoulder pushes him out after it, lurching with pain. Cursing, Malik follows suit.
Altair has fallen right off the roof and into the open roadway, where he struggles to get back to his feet with his arm clutched tight to his chest. Malik jumps down after him, trying to tug him up by his shoulder. "The artifact!" Altair snaps at him, and only then does Malik think to look around for it, though it hasn't landed where it should have, it's not at their feet—
"Always check roof gardens," says Ali. "They make excellent hiding spots. Actually I think it was your Brotherhood who taught me that!"
They look up. Ali is standing on the roof of the building they were just on, smiling down at them with his feet balancing on the edge. There's an archer at his side, a masked assassin. The arrows were strong to cut through the roof garden's thick flaps, but then, only the best for the Assassin's Order!
"You're going to die," says Altair, a touch of conceit maybe when it comes from a man with an arrow in his arm. Malik aches for a throwing knife.
Someone steps forward to face them on the ground: a familiar figure taking familiar steps. And holding a familiar golden orb.
"Abbas," says Malik, unwilling to move even his eyes. At his shoulder Altair snarls incoherently through his teeth. Neither man dares try anything while facing someone with so much power in the notch of his palm. Ali looks on, beaming.
Only Abbas seems unaware of the situation. He holds the Apple of Eden in both hands, reverently, his face sculpted into incandescence. He looks ten years younger than he should. The Apple casts its unnatural djinn-light against his face. Malik, trying to think back on how that felt, can remember only sleepy, heartsick warmth.
"Oh," says Abbas in wonder. "This time it isn't fighting me. I hear it in my head. This time it…"
"Drop it," says Altair, his voice a growl. "It's too much for you to handle. You prove yourself an idiot, trying to repeat your mistakes."
Abbas goes shrill, tearing his eyes away from the orb with an almost audible rip. "And what of your mistakes, half-breed? And what of yours?" He snaps his eyes to Malik and if anything his fury grows. "You stand here and lecture me, the mongrel and his catamite? You would drag the whole Brotherhood to your sick depths! You play with Mongols, you ignore your men and then throw them into another war, when it's you who means us harm. Why should any of us follow such an infidel sinner? How shall we face Allah after allowing Shaitan to lead us around?"
"Enough, Abbas," says Malik. "Look at all the damage you've caused."
"The damage you've caused!"
"Why kill your Brothers over what you think we've done? Be rational, it isn't too late for that."
Abbas screams, "Don't lecture me, zamel! No one needs to die. I'm going to save the Brotherhood. The rest of them will understand in time, they will."
"You think you can lead assassins?" Altair snorts. "You?"
"Shut up. They drove you from here once before. It can happen again!"
"Not by you. Abbas the pious soldier. Not even your god cares what happens to you."
Ali calls down, "How does it feel, Master Abbas? To hold such a weapon in your hand?"
"You—you were right. God, yes, you were right. It's nothing like last time. I…I know what they want from me…what it wants…righteousness…a path against those gone astray…"
"Master Abbas." Altair pulls the arrow from his arm as if it means nothing and points it at the man. "Am I expected to take this threat seriously, when the man I'm faced with is Master Abbas?"
Malik adds, "What is that, a person or a sort of sea sponge?"
"Don't let them mock you, Master. They don't have the right."
"This is absolutely the dumbest thing I've ever witnessed," Malik announces. Abbas looks from him to the Apple to Ali, pained. "I really don't know what you expect of me here. Should I cry at your feet because you called me a dirty name?"
He walks with slow, measured steps towards Abbas, who flinches and shakes the Apple at him. Altair's eyes follow him, trying to read his plan.
"I'm serious," Malik continues, around a sigh. "You say zamel as if it meant something. What, you coward, what does it mean? Does it mean that I am a better fighter than you? Because I am. Does it mean that I, and I alone, have Altair Ibn La'Ahad in my close confidence? Because I do. Does it mean," and he stands very close to Abbas now, hand closed around his short sword:
"Does it mean than you're a witless, spineless, jealous piece of shit? Because I think you are. Start all the uprisings you'd like," says Malik, "but Allah will never speak to you and Altair will never let you suck his cock."
He's sure that Abbas is going to hit him. Was planning on it, in fact. But all Abbas does is look at him, and then he laughs from deep in his throat, and Ali chuckles knowingly, and the Apple of Eden begins to glow.
Malik takes a giant step backwards. But the glow doesn't follow him as he'd feared; no ghost assassins come swarming forward to seize his arms and legs. Instead the glow gathers itself, pulls itself together from the orb's innards. Abbas watches with naked fascination, and Ali and the archer too. Even Altair is distracted. There's no point in fighting now, the orb seems to say, no reason for it. Only watch, and see what comes.
What comes is this:
The glow falls from the Apple to the ground and revives, rising into a man's limber shape. The robes are grey with red, a journeyman's outfit, sharply cut coattails and minor ornamentation. The body, settling from its golden beginnings into a white translucence, does not wear the assassins' garb quite as well as it should.
What comes is this:
Down from the creature's waist it is something of a nightmare, all twisted limbs and bulging. The knees, too wide, bent too far over the crooked feet, are entirely inhuman. The orb hums and pulses with effort; Abbas struggles to keep his grip on it.
The hands, stuck at the end of arms too long for the body, with elbows that point wrong, are gnarled and weathered, almost claws. The teeth are sharp and crowded in a mouth that's much too wide. The chest beats in uneven sputters, the skin painted over starveling's ribs.
What comes at last is this:
It is a wrong thing, a damaged thing, a djinni forced from the mists. Abbas goes pale at the sight of it, while dismayed color floods Altair's face. The djinni is nothing like what it should be. But its eyes are bright and wide and eager, its face round with good-natured cheer. A translucent demon with withered limbs, but it holds out a hand that Malik's held, and it watches him with eyes he knows, and it speaks to him in a voice that he still hears in his sleep.
It looks at him with such love when it talks.
"Hello, Akhi," Kadar says.