A/N: Alright, yes, I changed Guy-Marcel's real-name reveal. Originally it was Frédéric Rouille, an allusion to the original Assassin's Creed: Unity, as I figured it feels good to readers to read allusions to the original even in reboots. But now, as I'm approaching the September Massacres, I'm thinking I want to keep Rouille's assassination sequence to make this important moment in French history feel more ingrained in the story. Now I could keep Freddy here and still have our girl kill a Templar at the Grand Châtelet, but then people would be imagining someone else, and that's kind of awkward.

tl;dr Guy-Marcel isn't Frédéric Rouille any more, and the actual Frédéric Rouille will be Frédéric Rouille in an upcoming chapter.

A butterfly fluttered past Élise. To the guards at Rodet's house it was a tranquil afternoon, at least she hoped. One of them stared at her from across the street, or so she presumed as she tried to avoid too much eye contact. Hers was a face Guy-Marcel Rodet did not recognize, that is why she was here, on a bench opposite his home.

Despite the war, with the French military advancing into the Austrian Netherlands, Rodet and his militia were still here in Marseilles.

Rodet's house, which itself had taken them plenty of time to learn the location of, was small, but completely surrounded by pointy-tipped iron fencing, an Assassin's bane. It was also in the city (albeit the outer edge), meaning it benefited from law enforcement protection. The entrance gate was a locked gate, and Guy always kept at least one person watching over it from the inside, so picking the way in was not an option. In fact, Guy seemed to have two or three guards, likely volunteers from his militia, on his property at all time. On top of that, he always carried a pistol on his hip: at least the two times she had seen him.

Yet after so long looking for chink in his armor, they believed they had found it:

At some point, Joseph Servan had found new agents to smuggle weapons out of the Temple. They were delivered to Guy-Marcel's residence, presumably so he could decide how to allocate them. Élise had witnessed one of these events. Observing this delivery, she had been unarmed and in classic feminine attire, so as to be minimally suspicious. That is why she did not take the kill then and there. But she had been able to eavesdrop, learn when the next opportunity would be. The last time, Rodet had opened the gate and talked to the driver while two of his guards helped unload the wares. That provided three key vulnerabilities: the gate to his home opened, Rodet himself exposed, and the two guards with their hands full.

It was exciting to see this finally come to fruition, after so many dead ends.

Even now she was not liberally armed. She did not carry her sword or pistol. She did not want put Rodet's guards on high alert, one of whom was right across the street.

The plan was she and Arno (a couple of buildings down, not in view from Guy's house) would attack simultaneously, as soon as both of the mark's men had their backs turned and their hands full. She would be the one to do the honors of slaying the target.

It felt somewhat ironic, since it was Arno who had spent the most time with the man. He had told her at length about their encounters. After four sessions, though, Rodet refused to train Arno any more, so as to make way for training new recruits. The sessions had got more generously spaced as time went on, too, reflecting their growing numbers. His first and second training had been two weeks apart. His third and fourth had been been spaced by two months.

A seagull cawed.

It had been more than half a year since they had left Paris, and what a journey it had been. Denis' mother had learned about their past. Christmas had been celebrated in Denis' own way. Food riots had ravaged the market during the winter, before the French government negotiated peace with the Caribbean rebels. And she and Arno had worked side by side several times. They had grown a painful bond, one that could not be fully embraced or denied. But with each passing month, she grew more certain he would become one of them.

Though the subject always felt too tender to prod.

For all her faith in rational argument -

The clopping of horse hooves took her out of her thoughts. She glanced over quickly. The animals were the same color as last time: one black, one white. The person could be the same, although it was difficult to tell from a distance. Then she looked back at her legs and feet, while keeping her ears and mind focused on the wagon.

So many months they had been chasing this mark, Guy-Marcel Rodet. It was that name which had brought her here to the southern coast. After half a year, her blade might get the blood it craved.

He would be her first kill in Marseille.

The horses stopped. She looked up. The driver was the same as last time, a dark haired young man in a tricorn hat. This was indeed the day.

There was some indecipherable exchange between the guard at the front and the driver. She readied herself, all her muscles primed to spring into action, her training flowing through her veins.

It had been France's northern edge where she had been trained, its southern edge where she would now spill blood.

She heard the gate creek opened, but it was not yet she would pounce. The plan was to wait until two soldiers had their hands full. The driver reached for a document to his side and handed it to the mark, out of view. Élise would be sure to recover that.

Then she could see legs moving on the other side of the wagon. Those were the soldiers. This was all going exactly as planned. Glorious.

The first soldier, the one who had been guarding the front, took a chest from the back. The other took a barrel.

Now it was her time.

She sprung into action. She ran, jumped up on the coach, feet onto wood, and kicked the young driver hard in the head, off the vehicle. Then she leapt towards the shocked Rodet. As she soared, his hand went for his pistol, Arno firing a shot of his own would collect the attention of the guards to the left.

She landed on him and his pistol fired in vein. The loud noise sent her ears ringing, but she stabbed his hard through the junction of his shoulder and neck.

Defeat. After months, the huntress had caught her prey.

She withdrew her now crimson blade, fluids leaking liberally onto stone path to his door. He lay bleeding and defeated on his own front yard, a woman he'd never met standing over him. "Guy-Marcel Rodet, you've been a lot trouble for a mark." They had been chasing him for over a half a year.

"Don't bother with that silly name," he said, in the sedated spirit of death and defeat. "Frédéric. Frédéric Pons. That's who I am, who I've always been. Adopted this silly name and silly beard just so the Templars wouldn't find me."

"That didn't work out very well, did it? Your designs on Paris are over."

"What makes you think so? I've accomplished everything I was put up to. Killing me now stops...stops nothing. I've assembled a whole army amenable to our ideas, a counter weight to the royalist and aristocratic French Guard. Soon they'll be brought to Paris, and they'll...they'll do our work."

"Why do you need to build an army when you have the Apple in your hands?"

"The Apple can only be in one place at one time, and anyone who wields it becomes a target. And Brother Spartacus...Brother Spartacus says we never know when it might slip from our grasp, or need to be hidden away. It's never wise to hinge all your power on a single...a single thing." He was losing his grasp on life. He looked to the side, the blood pool form his neck now large enough to dye his hair.

"Tell me," Élise whispered. "Do you regret your treachery?"

He looked back at her.

"Not at all."

And with those words, he passed, blue eyes frozen in a final stare, mouth slightly agape, letting out a final breath.

She closed his eyes. Then she realized she had nearly forgot the letter. She grabbed it, skillfully folded it and stuffed it in her satchel. For now she needed to get away.