Assassin's Creed: Underworld (18 page)

It was a rare afternoon off for Police Constable
Aubrey Shaw.

No, that wasn’t strictly speaking true.
Firstly, because Aubrey’s afternoons off were comparatively frequent, and, secondly,
because it wasn’t really an ‘afternoon off’. Not in the officially sanctioned
sense anyway. A more accurate way of putting it would be to say that Police Constable Aubrey
Shaw had donned plain clothes and was skiving again.

As usual, Aubrey’s skiving incorporated a
cricketing element. Most of the time this meant hoisting ale in the Green Man but today was a
special day. He had taken his business to Lord’s Cricket Ground in order to watch the
annual Eton versus Harrow match. It was a nice sunny day to spend with a spot in the stands
(albeit crowded, as the event was attended by tens of thousands), a pie and maybe an ale or
three, with plenty of crinolines and bonnets to catch a man’s eye and the cricket whites
blinding in the sun.

Truth be known, Aubrey didn’t much care for
cricket, but the gentleman’s sport was a pastime his wife approved of, and what’s
more it involved pies and beer – and meeting those two requirements was central to
Aubrey’s journey through life.

He thought of Abberline.
Unmarried Abberline, constantly preoccupied Abberline – the two undeniably connected as
far as Aubrey could see.

‘A wife is what you need,’ was what
he’d told Abberline one afternoon in, where else but, the Green Man.

‘A fellow bobby who cares more about police
work and less about how to get out of doing it is what I need,’ was what Abberline had
replied.

Which was rather hurtful; after all, he, Aubrey,
had become almost as involved in their ongoing case as Freddie, and …

Oh no
, he thought, as he took his place
on the stands, I’m not thinking about Freddie today. Freddie, begone. And to signal an end
to work-related thoughts he began lustily joining in with the cheers, happy to submit himself to
the tides of the game and the rhythm of the day. Just another face in the crowd. Worries ebbing
away.

Still, though. He couldn’t help it. His
thoughts returned to Abberline and his obsession with what he called ‘the goings-on at the
rail works’. The two bobbies had asked themselves who beat the bodyguard to death.
‘One of them strongarms from the rail works,’ said Freddie predictably, but on this
occasion Aubrey had to agree with him. It was as plain as the nose on your face that Cavanagh
and co. were up to no good. After all, weren’t they all? Aristocrats and industrialists
and politicians all feathered their own nests, and breaking a few laws was a small inconvenience
if you had enough influence to ride roughshod over them.

Bloody hell
, thought Aubrey.
Hark at
me
. He was starting
to think like Freddie himself. It was catching,
that was what it was.

But they might know – this was what
Abberline said. If they’d got it out of the bodyguard then Cavanagh and co. might be aware
that Bharat Singh was the boy at the graveyard.

‘What would it matter to them if he
was?’ Aubrey had asked.

‘Maybe nothing, Aubrey, maybe nothing. Who
knows?’

It was a puzzle, no doubt about it. Like those
carved wooden shapes that fitted together. You turned it over in your hands to try to work out
how it fitted together.

A combination of cogitation, ale intake, the
sheer volume of other spectators and the fact that he was here at Lord’s on an unofficial
day off and probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway, meant that Aubrey wasn’t aware of
three men who had barged through the crowds to take places at the rear of the stand. They stood
with their backs to the fence, with their arms folded and the brims of their bowler hats pulled
down in the universal pose of men trying to look unobtrusive.

The three men weren’t watching the game
from beneath the brims of their hats. Their gaze was fixed firmly on Aubrey Shaw.

The last occupant of The Darkness had been
Jayadeep Mir some three years ago. Nevertheless, the rooms had to be maintained and so, as
regular as clockwork, Ajay and Kulpreet would take the steps down from the meeting house to
sweep out the chambers and allow fresh air from outside to temporarily banish the dank air of
gloom that otherwise hung about the place.

And as regular as clockwork Ajay would think it a
great joke to lock Kulpreet in one of the rooms.

Clang.

He’d crept up on her and, before she could
stop him, done it again; only this time, instead of standing outside snickering and mocking her
as usual, he was making off down the passageway.

Her shoulders sank with the sheer boring
inevitability of it all. Would he ever grow tired of it? Possibly not, because Ajay was nothing
if not juvenile, and despite the fact that she had a husband and a little boy at home he was
probably slightly in love with her too. And in her experience that was a very tedious
combination in a man.

Exasperated, she called through the viewing
aperture, ‘Ajay, not again,’ cursing that he’d been able to sneak up on her
like that, the rat.

There was silence from outside. Ajay had gone.
Damn
his eyes. She hoped it wasn’t one of those days when he decided
to string out the joke. He’d left her in there for half an hour once. Thank heavens
she’d long since learnt to bring a candle into the chambers with her.

‘Ajay,’ she called again, the words
falling flat on the dank stone. She rattled the door, the sound bouncing away into the darkness.
‘Ajay, this stopped being funny months ago. Open up, will you?’

Still there came no sound from outside and, come
to think of it, she hadn’t heard him for a while. Ajay wasn’t one for keeping quiet.
Even with him upstairs and her downstairs, he would have been calling to her, making bad jokes
and puns, teasing her. In fact, when
was
the last time she’d heard any voice
other than her own? You could lose all sense of time down here.

From outside the door came a sound that made her
jump. ‘Ajay,’ she said sharply, but brought her leading arm to bear, tensing her
wrist in readiness.

And then he was there, face at the window,
grinning at her.

‘I got you that time, Kulpreet. You thought
they’d come to get us, didn’t you?’

Right
, she thought, and she arched one
eyebrow and engaged her blade, precision-controlling its length so that it shot through the
aperture and into the tip of Ajay’s nostril.

Not just one of the Indian Brotherhood’s
best with a sword, Kulpreet was also one of the best with a blade, and it was a perfectly
judged, expertly balanced deployment.

‘Impressive,’ said Ajay, with a newly
acquired nasal
twang. He was pinned in place by the blade, knowing that the
slightest movement could effectively slice open his nostril, and thinking that, by God, she kept
that thing sharp. Constantly greasing and recalibrating it, she was. ‘It’ll never
jam, Ajay,’ she’d tell him, sliding the blade into its housing, and then follow it
with her best disapproving stare. ‘Not like some others I could mention.’

Kulpreet kept her blade where it was. ‘Toss
me the keys,’ she said, and then when he’d done as he was told and was free again,
barged angrily past him on her way to the door.

Upstairs they locked up and prepared to leave for
the night. Kulpreet studiously ignored Ajay, which she knew was a far worse punishment for him
than a hidden blade up his nose.

As she did every night she placed her flat-bladed
sword into the wall rack, kissed her fingers and touched them to the fine Indian steel, before
joining Ajay at the meeting-house door. The two Assassins said their parting words then slipped
outside and locked the door behind them.

Neither noticed faces in the crowded street that
watched them leave with interest – and then moved to follow.

What a great day
, thought Aubrey as he
joined the thousands of spectators leaving Lord’s. He was a little merry, if he was honest
with himself. Merry enough to decide to sweet-talk a flower girl on a deal for a bunch, take the
flowers home to Marjorie and tell his wife he loved her; merry enough to have forgotten all
about acrobatic Indian boys and mysterious disappearing men in robes; and way too merry to
notice the three men who were following him, their heads bowed and their hands in their pockets
in the classic manner of men trying to look inconspicuous.

He was even merry enough to consider hailing one
of the growlers constantly popping to and fro, but then decided against it. Best to sober up a
bit. Just a bit. And so he kept on walking, turning off the main drag into quieter side streets,
leaving the crowds and clopping hooves behind as he weaved his way through darker streets where
the constant sound of running water reminded him that he needed a piss, and he ducked into an
alleyway to relieve himself.

Because in the end it’s the small things
that matter as much as the big ones: a stolen pocket watch that is slow, a man in need of a
piss.

Aubrey sensed the light in the alleyway change
before he saw anything, and still putting himself back into his
trousers,
he glanced to one end and saw that in the mouth of the alleyway stood a figure. Then back at the
other end: another figure.

Aubrey shivered. Any other day and this would be
a pair of mutchers, the street ruffians who preyed on the poor souls who were too drunk to offer
much resistance – and of course Aubrey could deal with them all right, drunk or sober.

But this wasn’t any other day. And besides,
he fancied he recognized the two men who blocked both exits, and that made it worse than a pair
of mutchers.

They were moving up the alley towards him. A
third figure had appeared at the mouth of the alley. Aubrey desperately wished he had his
truncheon but knew it would be no good. He cast his eyes at the streaming wall in front of him
in the hope that a ladder might magically be present, and then back at the men, who were upon
him now.

He recognized the grinning faces in the second
before the light went out. Just as he’d known he would.

Striding through the streets of Amritsar in
their robes, Kulpreet and Ajay had been preoccupied with their own thoughts – which was
why they didn’t notice until it was too late that the crowd had seemed to de-materialize,
and in the street before them was a line of seven men in matching brown suits.

Curses.

They wheeled round. The street was emptying.
Behind them was another phalanx of men in brown suits, nervous crowds moving away from them like
ripples from a
dropped stone. A tempo of fear increased as the brown suits
began to produce kukris from within their coats. Over a dozen blades versus two.

Ajay and Kulpreet looked at one another. With a
reassuring smile she pulled her cowl over her head and he did the same, and then he reached to
give her three quick taps and a squeeze on her upper arm, and she responded to the code with a
nod. They knew what to do.

Mentally they both counted –
one, two,
three
– and then, in one coordinated movement, went back to back, deploying their
blades at the same time. It was a measure of how quiet everything had become that the noise of
this was audible, and a measure of how confident the brown suits felt that they didn’t
even flinch, didn’t even look nervous.

The one in the middle was the leader. He gave a
whistle and rotated a finger. As one, the brown suits began to advance, the end of each line
edging forward, closing the circle in the hope of trapping Ajay and Kulpreet at its centre.

‘
Now
,’ said Kulpreet and
they made their move. She dashed to a canopy on her left and he went in the opposite direction,
and both reached their respective targets before the brown suits could get to them.

Ajay’s blade was back in its housing as he
hit the wall running, his bare feet clinging to the stone as he reached for a sill and heaved
himself up. Two more grunting efforts and he was on the roof traversing the building, jumping
down to the street on the other side and sprinting into a passageway. At the end was one of
Amritsar’s street walls separating one thoroughfare from the next,
and Ajay went for it now, knowing he’d be home free if he could scale the wall and
get over.

He never made it. The brown suits had anticipated
his move, and as Ajay reached the end of the alleyway they appeared, taking him by surprise. He
stumbled and saw a kukri flashing towards him, and acting on instinct brought his hidden-blade
arm into defence, engaging the steel …

Only, the blade didn’t engage.

It jammed.

Aubrey had no idea where he was, but sensed that
was the least of his concerns.

What mattered was that he was bound to a chair in
a room that was dark, apart from a flickering orange glow given off by lamps bolted to the
walls, while in front of him stood the three punishers, gazing at him with smiling dispassion,
preparing to do their work.

Hardy moved forward. He pulled on black leather
gloves and then from his jacket pocket took a pair of brass knuckles that he slipped over his
fingers. The two other men shared a look and then stepped back into the shadows as Hardy came to
Aubrey and put his gloved hand to the peeler’s face, like a sculptor testing the
consistency of his unmoulded clay.

And then he moved back and placed his feet with
the expertise of a boxer, and Aubrey thought that closing his eyes might be a good idea right
now, so he did, and it was funny, because he’d always found it difficult to picture his
family when he was away from them; it was something he always wished he could do – just to
have them with him. But they came to him now. A perfect image of them that he clung to as the
blows began raining in. There was that, at least, to be said for being beaten up.

Thank God for small mercies.

Kulpreet awoke with a sore
head and found herself squinting in the grey dark of a warehouse: an empty, cavernous space,
with just the slapping sound of rain pouring through the roof and birds nesting in the rafters.
Rusting stairways led to ancient dilapidated gantries overhead.

She was restrained in an unusual manner. She was
seated at one end of a long slatted table, to all intents and purposes as though she were an
honoured guest for dinner – apart from the fact that you tended not to tie up honoured
guests. Her chair was pushed neatly beneath the table. She couldn’t see her feet but they
were bound to the chair legs. Meanwhile, her hands were laid out in front of her and tied
tightly with leather thongs, palms flat to the tabletop. They were placed almost as though she
were about to receive a manicure.

In a sense she was. A few inches from her
fingers, laid very deliberately so that she could see them, was a pair of pliers, the sort of
rusting pliers one might use to extract a fingernail.

She knew of this torture of course. The
cumulative pain. Apparently there was an Assassin who had managed five before he broke.

As far as she could tell, there were three brown
suits in the warehouse with her. With a clenched jaw she watched as one of them inspected her
hidden blade, and if there was one thing that made her angry – beyond being captured,
beyond having it taken from her and beyond being told by sniggering brown suits that Ajay had
been cut down like a dog in the street, it was that. They had Ajay’s
blade as well. Another Templar thug stood at the end of the table turning it over in his
hands.

‘This one jammed,’ he told his
friends, and they laughed.

But that’s not why you can’t
deploy it, you idiot
, thought Kulpreet. Not unless you can slip it over your wrist and
arrange your muscles and tendons in such a way as to precisely emulate Ajay or can activate the
fail-safe switch, and to be honest you could spend the rest of your life looking for the
fail-safe switch and still not find it.

The lead brown suit turned his attention from his
colleagues to Kulpreet. ‘It’s calibrated to each individual Assassin,’ called
the lead brown shirt over his shoulder as he came forward to Kulpreet. Behind him the two thugs
had grown bored of inspecting the blades and dropped them to the table, and she wanted to look
over at them, to check their position, but didn’t dare.

She was thinking about that fail-safe switch.

‘Well, well, she’s awake, said the
grinning inquisitor. ‘Looks like it’s time to begin.’

He picked up the pliers but then made a show of
pretending to reconsider and dropped them back to the table with a clunk. ‘Maybe I
won’t be needing those,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘I mean, it’s not
as if it’s a difficult question, the one I have to ask. “Did you put Jayadeep Mir to
death three years ago, or was he banished to London instead?” It’s quite
straightforward really.’

He looked at her, but if he was hoping for a
response she didn’t give him the satisfaction. He continued. ‘You see, pretty one,
we have a colleague in London who was a British army officer who spent some time in India, and
he heard
all about the extraordinary Jayadeep Mir, and now he’s met a
rather extraordinary Indian boy in London and what with one thing and another he wonders if the
two might be one and the same. What do you have to say about that?’

She said nothing but when he stepped to one side
and retrieved the pliers she was able to see past him and check the position of the blades. Now
she needed to check the stability of the table, and she feigned a helpless fury, shaking herself
as though trying to wrench free. The men shared an amused glance but she’d learnt what she
needed to know: the table was not secured to the floor, but it was heavy, too heavy for her to
tip by herself. She’d need help to do that.

But if she could tip it, then maybe she could
reach one of the blades.

‘Water,’ she said softly.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said the
inquisitor. He’d been turning the pliers over in his hand, staring at them fondly.
‘What was that?’

She made as though she were too parched to form
words. ‘Water …’

He leaned a little closer. ‘What did you
say?’

Was he close enough to grab with her teeth? She
had two chances to do this, and this was one of them. But if she messed it up …

No. Best to wait. Best to try to lull him into a
false sense of security.

And so, as though making a Herculean effort, she
managed to say the word ‘water’ audibly enough for her inquisitor to hear, and he
stepped away, beaming.

‘Ah, I thought
that’s what you said.’ He indicated to one of the men who disappeared then
reappeared a few moments later with an earthenware mug that he placed on the table in front of
her.

She made an attempt to reach for it with her
teeth before fixing him with a look of appeal, and with a smile he picked up the mug and lifted
it to her lips, excited at having this beautiful woman so much in his control that she needed
help even having a sip of water. Oh, how he was going to enjoy what came next. The inquisitor
was a man who enjoyed his work. He was good at it; he was an expert when it came to inflicting
…

Pain.

It shot up his arm. With her teeth she had
clamped on to his hand and she wasn’t just biting him, she was eating him. Oh my God, she
was eating him alive.

He yelled in agony. The mug dropped but
didn’t smash. Kulpreet kept her teeth clenched on the inquisitor’s hand, tasting
sweat and dirt and wrenching her neck at the same time, maximizing his pain and using every
ounce of her strength to bring him closer. At the same time she tipped the legs of the chair out
to one side, resting all her weight on her forearms as she used them to slam into the
inquisitor’s shins, sending him off balance and increasing the speed of his downward
journey so that at last he sprawled to the table, face breaking the earthenware mug as he made
contact, and if that added to his pain then great, thought Kulpreet, but that wasn’t her
main objective, because what she needed to do now was …

And with all her might and using the weight of
them
both, she bore down on the table, which tilted so the blades came
skidding down the surface towards her waiting fingertips. The inquisitor was in the way so she
couldn’t even see them come but she felt one reach her fingertips just as he managed to
yank his hand free of her mouth, and she gasped with her own pain as one of her teeth went with
it. Blood and torn flesh were round her mouth but she didn’t care about that now; all she
cared about was the blade she was turning over in her hands, feeling for the fail-safe. Over the
body of the inquisitor she could see the other two men exchanging an amused glance before
reaching for their kukris, because, after all, what could she do? The odds were not in her
favour. Even with a blade she was still tied to a chair, and there were three of them and a
locked door. Skilled and clever and lucky as she was, there wasn’t enough luck in the
world to save her now. They knew it, she knew it. They all knew how this would end: she would
tell them what they wanted to know and then she would die.

Kulpreet realized this of course. But the object
of getting the blades was not to use on her captors.

It was to use on herself.

But still, thank God for small mercies, because
she had the opportunity to take one with her and so as her thumb went to the fail-safe switch,
she did what looked like an odd thing: she brought her face close to the throat of the
inquisitor, who was still trying to pull free of her. She brought her face close to his throat
as though she were trying to look at something closely there, and because of the position of her
arms it looked as if she were taking him in a lover’s embrace, pressing her flesh to his.

One of her captors realized
her true intention but it was too late. She had already rammed the blade housing up to the
inquisitor’s neck and then, with her eye still at his throat, released the blade, which
shot through him and into her.

Just before Kulpreet died she thought of all she
had done. She thought of her husband and little boy at home, who would be wondering where she
was. She even thought of poor old Ajay –
Well, I’ll be joining you soon, old
friend
– and she thought of the Brotherhood and wished it well, and it was with a
heavy heart that she knew the struggle for a better and fairer world would have to continue
without her.

And as the point of the blade drove through her
attacker’s neck and into her own eye and into her brain, Kulpreet knew this was a better
death than the one they had planned for her, but she wondered if it was a noble death. She had
told them nothing, and she hoped that would count for something. She hoped the Council would
decree that she died with honour.