Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Being staked goes a little differently for every Kindred unlucky enough to find out how, or so Edward was told by his own sire. Some are fully conscious, and unable to do anything about it. Others are loosely aware of their surroundings, but only in brief glimpses, as if dreaming.

In the moments after a wooden table leg has been introduced directly to his chest, something that would have killed him had he not taken Jack’s deal, Edward thinks he’s the first sort. The lucky bastard who managed it’s pulling himself to his feet and turning towards the boy standing in the doorway.

His son. Haytham. Who meets Edward’s eyes, shock and horror written all over his face. He’s ten tonight, and only just. Edward can survive this; his son absolutely can’t, and he’d rather have to break the Masquerade to Haytham than have to bury either of his children before their time.

“Haytham, run!” he tries to say, but no words come out. His lips don’t move.

Despite his best efforts to do something, anything else, he crumples to the floor.

There is a third common reaction to being staked, or so Edward’s sire said: being aware of nothing at all, until it’s removed.

As such, Edward has no way of knowing that he’s the third sort until over a century, and nearly everyone he once knew, has passed.

Maybe it’s better that way. Maybe it’s everything but.

Chapter Text

There are many ways one might handle the untimely passing of a father they looked up to more than anyone else in the world. Personally, Evie Frye thinks she handled it better than most, considering that she channeled her grief into something reasonably productive; that, of course, being locking herself in her bedroom for a week to read his journals.

And then to re-read them, entirely to commit the important parts to memory and not at all because she wasn’t ready to face the world again quite yet. She had certainly intended to only commit the important parts to memory; what could only be the deranged ravings of a great man laid low by fever at the end of his life were not that. Yet they managed to stick in her mind regardless, in spite of—or perhaps because of—the fact that they didn’t fit with the way she wanted to remember her father at all.

(Perhaps part of that was because, when they spoke for what she didn’t know then was the final time, he had seemed far more lucid than the lunatic who wrote of Kindred, creatures of the night suspiciously similar to the mythological vampire.)

“...Miss Frye,” Henry says uncertainly. He’s undoubtedly staring at precisely what she is.

“Mister Green,” she replies automatically. Then she stares some more. And then she says, in lieu of addressing what she truly should sooner rather than later, “Is there a way to close that door behind us?”

“I, ah... I can check,” Henry says, tearing his gaze away to double back as Evie herself steps forward, with a cautious hand on the hilt of her cane-sword.

It occurs to her only now, standing within the secret basement of the Kenway Mansion, that perhaps her dying father seemed lucid at the time because he was lucid. That perhaps she owes him a posthumous apology for not believing what he wrote.

She has no other explanation for what she and Henry have discovered.

“There was,” Henry reports, joining her. “Now, ah... what do you suppose we do about... this?”

He’s at as much of a loss for words as Evie herself is. Perhaps more so. She can’t quite blame him.

Her father wrote quite extensively about the Kindred that she had really and truly thought were nothing more than a dying man’s fabrications. She recalls... bits and pieces, mainly, but a few facts seem most relevant here.

Firstly, that Kindred do not age. One of them could look precisely the same today as they did in the days of Ezio Auditore, or even Altaïr.

Secondly, that Kindred can be disabled by the insertion of a wooden stake into their heart. That they will be incapable of movement until that stake is removed, and may be entirely unaware of their surroundings.

Lastly and most importantly, that they need the blood of humans to survive. That going for long enough without—say, because of having a stake in their heart for decades or centuries—will result in unrestrained, indiscriminate violence against those poor fools nearest to them when they awaken.

Evie weighs her options. And then she says, “Wait here.”

Henry watches as she retraces her steps, heaving what looks suspiciously like the wheel of a ship to the side until she has opened the passage enough for her to slip out, and no more.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Locating one of Thorne’s men,” Evie says. “Close the door behind me. I know how to open it from the other side, and we can’t risk discovery now.”

To his credit, Henry nods without hesitation. “And then...?”

“Then...” Evie glances over her shoulder. “Then, we find out if that man is who I suspect him to be.”

The man lying motionless behind them matches every written description of Edward Kenway that Evie has ever read, despite the fact that it has been well over a century since his murder. Given that, the location, and Evie’s admittedly limited knowledge of what Kindred are... she has her suspicions, and she’s only growing more certain of them.

One issue at a time. She knows enough to know that if she or Henry removes the stake from his heart now, no matter who the man in the basement is, one or both of them will die.

She’d rather not have that happen, personally.

Edward doesn’t remember how he got here.

That’s the first coherent thought he has, before more information about his surroundings filters in through the haze of shaking off torpor. He’s standing over a body thoroughly drained of blood. Two more kine stand on the other side of the room, at what they probably think is a safe distance. Both wear hoods, and the woman’s standing almost protectively in front of the man. Both are staring at him.

Edward stares back, and tries to remember how the hell he got here. Or where here even is. His surroundings seem vaguely familiar, but it’s not quite clicking...

Of the kine, the woman regains her composure—somewhat—first. “That was a Templar. I... thought you wouldn’t mind too much.”

“...Aye,” Edward says slowly. He flexes his fingers, largely to reassure himself that he’s capable of that once more. “You thought right.”

Slowly, recognition dawns. He’s in his own basement. The hidden room... that he had not been in when he was attacked. How did he get here?

He looks the kine over again. The way they’re dressed is unfamiliar, other than the hoods. He knows, in a distant sort of way, that fashion changes over time. How long has it been?

The woman relaxes slightly at his speech. Her companion does not, but he doesn’t move to stop her when she walks forward.

“My name is Evie Frye,” she says, then nods behind her, “and this is Henry Green. We’re Assassins. And you...”

She hesitates, looking him over.

“...You’re Edward Kenway, aren’t you?”

“I am.” He looks around, taking in the memorabilia from his pirate days. “...Guessing you don’t know how I wound up here.”

Evie shakes her head. She looks young. Both of them look young—adults, certainly, but not by all that much.

“I was hoping you might be able to tell me that,” Evie says apologetically. “We found your journal, my brother and I... it led us here. I was expecting clues to the Shroud of Eden you’d hidden, not...”

Clearly, not Edward himself. Dead or alive, or anywhere in between. In spite of this, she—or possibly her companion, but Henry Green is still staring quite a bit more than her and hasn’t said a word—did exactly the right thing to wake him up without risking herself any more than she already is just by talking to him. Either she’s incredibly lucky, or she knows more than she’s saying about Kindred.

...Despite the fact that she has less of an idea about how he got here than Edward does.

Assassins already have to maintain a Masquerade of sorts. And, Edward thinks, the cat is already fully out of the bag with these two.

“You know who I am, clearly. Do you know what I am?”

Hastily, Evie nods. “My father wrote in his journals of Kindred, before he died. I... until tonight, I was certain that he must have been... mistaken. I owe him an apology.”

That explains... quite a few things. Briefly, he wonders what his sire would think of all this. But then, he doesn’t know if his sire is even still around.

And there are more important things to worry about at the moment, anyway.

“Well,” Edward says, “I’d say his writing served you well tonight.”

“...I’d say so,” Evie agrees.

“I’ve no intention of attacking you,” Edward says, directing it more toward the still-silent Henry Green than toward Evie herself.

Henry nods without a word. He’s still staring, but he also isn’t fleeing, so there’s something.

“Right, then,” Edward mutters to himself. He looks down at the spot where the stake had clearly been embedded in his chest. He looks at the drained Templar at his feet.

And then he sighs and looks back up at the two Assassins in the room. “No sense in putting this off. What year is it?”

Evie opens her mouth, then closes it without a word, which isn’t a good sign.

It’s Henry who speaks up before she does. “1868. It has been one hundred and thirty-three years since your... supposed death.”

Edward isn’t sure if he wants to laugh, cry, scream, or all of the above. He settles for doing none of them, staring blankly at Henry instead.

“I’m sorry,” Henry says.

“Is there... anything else specific you would like to know?” Evie ventures cautiously.

“I... don’t suppose you know,” Edward starts, his voice coming out roughly, “what happened to my wife or children.”

“All three survived the attack,” Evie says in the same cautious tone. “Though it’s said that your wife was... never the same again, she died of natural causes. Your daughter was kidnapped by the Templars that killed you and sold into slavery overseas, but your son was eventually able to rescue her, and she lived here until her death many years later.”

“Christ,” Edward says faintly.

“...I’d say you should sit down,” she goes on in a quieter tone, “if there was anywhere suitable for it.”

The last thing he remembers of his son is his terrified face, before everything went dark.

He was just a boy, then. He grew, and died, and Edward missed all of it. And he doesn’t know what Evie’s about to tell him, but he dreads it all the same.

He’s no coward, though, and waves for her to continue speaking.

“...Haytham was taken in by Grand Master Reginald Birch,” Evie murmurs, “and raised as a Templar.”

Edward very badly wishes he’d killed Birch when he realized what he was.

“And Birch was behind what happened to Jenny too, I’d wager,” he says, fury creeping into his voice.

Evie nods. “If it’s any consolation, she and Haytham killed him.”

“Not much of one,” Edward says tightly, “but I’ll take what I can get.”

“I can understand that.” Evie pauses, before something resolute fills her gaze. “Mister Kenway, London has been under Templar control for the past century, and there are only a few of us willing and able to take it back. Myself, Mister Green, and my brother, mainly, and what few other allies we have gathered within the city. I understand if you would rather be left alone to grieve. But if you’d be willing to aid us...”

It will do little to assuage his guilt, or avenge the lives his children should have had. But doing something is better than wallowing in self-pity. He did more than his share of that in his mortal days.

Maybe that’s why Edward takes a breath he doesn’t need, and nods.

“What would you have me do?” he asks. It’s a little formal for his tastes, but this isn’t his Brotherhood any longer. The least he can do is show a little respect for those whose Brotherhood it is.

Evie looks... more than a little startled at that response. “Well, before anything else—considering that the Templars have had free access to this building for at least sixty years and never discovered this room, I doubt they will find it tonight, but we can’t be too careful. Where does the other exit lead?”

“It used to lead out into some sewers,” Edward offers. “If the room was never discovered, I reckon that’s still the case.”

“If this room was previously discovered, I don’t believe we would be speaking with each other now,” Evie replies thoughtfully. “If it remains undiscovered, then... what here would you say is most crucial that the Templars do not get their hands on, Mister Kenway?”

Edward sweeps his gaze across the room thoughtfully. For a moment, his gaze lingers on the Jackdaw’s wheel, and his chest aches with longing for when things seemed simpler.

He gives himself a shake, and crosses to where he had left clues leading to the location of the Shroud. They’re still exactly where he left them, and Edward tucks the document and golden disc into an interior pocket in his coat.

“That should do it,” he says.

He did originally write this with the purpose of guiding future Assassins to the Shroud. But now that he is, it seems, about to be involved once more... he’ll hold onto these for now.

“I don’t like the thought of leaving the rest,” Evie mutters, her own gaze sweeping through the room, “but even if the Templars are suspicious... they surely must have been suspicious before, and they found nothing.”

Neither did the Assassins, though. Not until now. The fact that it’s taken over a century for them to find this room at all...

“We should go,” Henry says, glancing toward the sewers. “If we’re fast, we might be able to catch the train.”

“What the bloody hell is a train?” Edward asks.

Both Assassins look more than a little startled.

“That... would have been after your time,” Henry says thoughtfully.

“It’s, ah...” Evie frowns. “It might be better to show you?”

“...Alright,” Edward says. “Lead on, then.”

A train, as it turns out, is some kind of enormous metal vehicle churning out smoke. One that is approaching the building that they’re currently on top of rapidly.

(It’s... good to be outside, at least. Under the night sky, though it seems to have less stars in it than Edward remembers.)

“Good, we haven’t missed it,” Evie comments. “That, Mister Kenway, is a train. As well as my brother and I’s base of operations. If we’re lucky, he won’t be in.”

“If we’re lucky?” he echoes.

“He will have far too many questions that I sincerely doubt you’ll want to answer,” Evie says, which actually raises more questions. “You can jump anytime you like, but I’d recommend aiming for the tops of cars. Head for the second car once you’re aboard.”

And, on that note, Evie leaps. She makes it aboard the first... car... at least, after the one that’s pumping out smoke. Edward is going to assume that doesn’t count.

“The Frye twins... don’t get along as well as I thought they would before I met them,” Henry says, before he jumps as well.

“Great,” Edward sighs, jumping after Henry.

His landing could certainly have gone better, but he doesn’t end up falling off the train, which means his first attempt at boarding the thing didn’t end in humiliation. He’ll take it.

Henry’s kind enough to offer him a hand back to his feet once he’s aboard, and also doesn’t say a word about Edward following him to what is, in fact, the third ‘car’ unless you ignore the first.

Evie’s there. A young man who looks very similar to her, fiddling with a hat and lounging on a sofa, is also there. And doesn’t seem to have noticed Edward yet.

Edward takes up a position against the doorway—does it count as a doorway, in a train? He’ll figure that out later—and decides to observe for a moment.

He’d like to know what to expect out of the Frye twins if at all possible.

“How goes the—” Evie sighs. “—gang?”

“The Rooks are doing just fine,” the brother—Edward doesn’t know his name yet—says, giving his twin a sharp grin.

Evie sighs deeper, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I still cannot believe you called them that.”

“That, my dear sister, is your problem, not mine.”

Edward can’t quite suppress a snort at that.

Her brother’s clearly more observant than he appeared, because he glances over before Evie does. “Hello, Greenie. Hello—”

He stares. And Edward remembers that he is, in fact, still covered in blood.

“The hell happened to you?”

“...It’s a long story,” Henry says quietly.

“...Right,” he says slowly. “Well, I’m Jacob Frye. Who’re you?”

“That’s Edward Kenway,” Evie cuts in, and Edward doesn’t particularly enjoy the level of reverence in her voice.

“Who?”

She sighs and gives Jacob an exasperated look. “The pirate?”

“Oh!”

“Well, I’m no pirate anymore,” Edward points out. Not that the distinction mattered to the vast majority of people. Once a pirate, always a pirate, no matter what you’d done since.

“It was the only way he was likely to recognize your name,” Evie mutters. “Seeing as he hardly paid attention in lessons.”

“Oi!” Jacob protests.

What has Edward gotten himself into here?

“We were following the trail of the journal you and your sister recovered from the Templars the other day,” Henry offers to Jacob. “It led us to the Kenway Mansion. And, ah... under it.”

Jacob nods along to Henry’s words, then looks sidelong at Edward.

“How are you not dead, then?” he asks.

“Oh, I am,” Edward says cheerfully.

“Father wrote of beings called Kindred in one of his later journals,” Evie supplies, with a glance toward Edward. “That were... not quite dead, but not quite alive either, and would live forever provided they weren’t killed. Something easiest to do with sunlight or fire, but otherwise quite hard to.”

Edward doesn’t miss the way Jacob’s expression darkens at the mention of their father. But, Jacob doesn’t comment on that.

“You’re one of those, then?” Jacob says instead.

He can appreciate the lad’s bluntness, if nothing else.

“Aye, that I am,” Edward says.

Jacob nods. “And, uh, how did... that happen?” he asks, waving vaguely at the area where, until earlier tonight, Edward had had a repurposed table leg shoved into his chest.

“Templars got lucky.”

“Bastards,” Jacob says with feeling.

Edward laughs. “That they are.”

Evie looks between them, then clears her throat. “First order of business now, you look like you should be dead and that is a reaction I assume you’d rather not most people have. Jacob, Mister Green, I somehow doubt that any of my clothing would fit, but perhaps...”

“Ah,” Edward says, looking down at himself. “That might be an issue, aye.”

Henry frowns, clearly thinking about it. “You’re taller than Jacob but broader than me...”

“Perhaps one of Jacob’s shirts and a pair of your trousers, then?” Evie suggests.

“That could work.”

Fortunately for the sake of Edward’s dignity, it does. And men’s clothing hasn’t changed so much that he’s unable to dress himself, much to his relief.

The world has changed enough without him already.

He’s a little surprised when Jacob’s waiting for him. And then immediately less surprised when the first thing out of his mouth is, “What’s it like, being a pirate?”

“It’s... freeing,” he says. “Nothing but the open ocean and your crew...” Edward sighs. “But I spent years rushing around, taking whatever I fancied, and never caring for the people I hurt. Until one day I looked around and realized there was not a man or woman I loved left standing beside me. All the riches in the world aren’t worth that, lad.”

Whatever answer Jacob was expecting, it clearly wasn’t that. Edward just looks at him steadily.

“Right,” Jacob says at last. “Better not keep Evie waiting.”

“I suppose not,” Edward agrees. “She doesn’t seem the overly patient sort.”

Jacob laughs. “Only when it suits her.”

“I know the type.”

“She didn’t used to be this bad,” Jacob grumbles under his breath as he turns away. “Come on.”

Once again, Edward wonders what he’s gotten himself into, but he follows nonetheless.

“So, I assume you have some sort of plan for dealing with these Templars?” he says once they’re back with Evie and Henry.

Evie nods. “The Templars still hold influence over the vast majority of London. But that is changing, little by little. Whitechapel isn’t under their control anymore, and what worked there should work on a wider scale as well.”

“And what did work there?” Edward asks.

“More broadly, finding allies that were just as unhappy with them if not moreso than we are, so as to thwart the Templars in every aspect of their control,” Evie says firmly. “We have allies everywhere from the police service to the criminal underworld. Henry’s intelligence has proved invaluable in determining where to strike next, and Jacob’s gang has been a helpful counterweight to those backed by Starrick.”

He’s impressed. “Alright,” he says. “And what do you need me for?”

“That... depends on what your particular skillset would be best suited to,” she says, a little less firmly.

“There’s always killing people,” Jacob offers helpfully.

Edward snorts. “I am quite good at that,” he allows. “Though a string of bodies drained of blood would be a bit of an issue for the Masquerade.”

For all that the Camarilla and its rules are utter bullshit, they do have a point about that one. Even Jack begrudgingly admitted that.

Evie, mid-turn towards her brother, pauses. “Father’s journal mentioned that, but not precisely what it was.”

“The way my sire put it to me was ‘keep our secrets secret’. Humans aren’t supposed to know about us, on the whole. It tends to end in torches and pitchforks when they do.”

“That... would be a problem, yes,” Henry agrees.

“There’s other ways of killing people than sucking up their blood,” Jacob says.

“True.” Edward flexes his wrist, and the hidden blade pops into view. “Ah, good, that still works.”

“...Strange to see how little it’s changed over the years,” Evie muses, looking at it before she reveals her own.

“I doubt it’s changed much since the days of Altaïr,” Edward says thoughtfully.

Evie considers this, before sheathing hers. “Likely not.”

He sheathes his as well. “I suppose I also ought to see what Kindred are around in London these nights,” he says, halfway to himself.

“Given the Masquerade, I assume you wouldn’t want assistance with that?”

“You would assume correctly,” Edward says with a nod.

Chapter Text

Edward takes the rest of the night to himself, which he thinks he is more than justified, given that everything he knew no longer exists. Or if it does, it’s undoubtedly changed from when he knew it.

He spends the day slumbering in the earth, because returning to his old home held little appeal, and the train is hardly sun-proof. Also, the way it rattles over the tracks is bloody unnerving.

Kindred society is more stagnant than mortal society, so he’s somewhat hopeful that he’ll find something he recognizes. Even if it means rubbing elbows with Camarilla toffs.

That doesn’t mean he’s expecting to literally shoulder-check a Kindred he recognizes (by accident!) within three steps of the front door of the first club he tries.

“Excuse—”

The other man pauses, reaching a hand up to lower his sunglasses. Burning eyes stare back at him. And their owner says, incredulously, “Edward? I thought you’d met with Final Death... well over a century ago.”

“Hello to you too, Beckett,” Edward says, chuckling. “That’s... a bit of a long story. Perhaps better-suited for a slightly more private location.”

That is, not directly in front of the door.

“Ah,” Beckett says, glancing over at the door. “Right. Yes. I might have an idea.”

Considering that Beckett has probably been here slightly more recently than Edward, Edward has no qualms about following Beckett’s lead on this.

“Lead the way,” he says, waving a hand.

One table in the corner of the place later, Beckett says, “Where were we?”

Edward sighs. “Right. Well.” He glances around, but doesn’t see anyone paying particular attention to them. “I got to spend the last one hundred and thirty-three years staked in my own basement.”

Beckett goes very still. “Ah. How did... how did that happen?”

“Templars attacked the night of Haytham’s tenth birthday.” Edward takes a shaky breath that he doesn’t actually need, closing his eyes for a moment. “One of them got lucky with a table leg.”

“...It did seem odd, that you’d fallen so easily,” Beckett says. “You, ah... know about your children?”

“Yes,” he says, barely above a whisper. “A pair of Assassins found their way into the basement, and... found me. I’m not sure how I wound up down there, and neither are they. But... they told me.”

“I’m sorry,” Beckett says, which has got to be the most sympathy he has audibly expressed (or will express) for the century.

Edward manages a wan smile. “Thank you.”

And that’s probably about Beckett’s limit on sentimentality, so he clears his throat and says, “So, what’s going on in London that I ought to be aware of?”

“On the mortal side of things, a pair of Assassins I suspect you’ve already met have been causing a great many problems for the local Templars,” Beckett says. “On our side... hmm. You would have missed that Mithras vanished. Without a trace, or so they say.”

Now that is fascinating.

“I thought the old bastard would never leave London,” Edward says thoughtfully.

“Rumor has it he was surprised by the revolution in France,” Beckett says, “and sightings of him continue to crop up across the British Empire, but while the current acting Prince takes every potential sighting seriously, I believe we’d know if he had returned.”

“He’s not a subtle one,” Edward says by way of agreement.

He blinks as the rest of Beckett’s words sink in.

“What revolution in France?”

“...Oh! Oh, right,” Beckett says. “You’ve missed some things on the kine side of matters, assuming none of your new friends mentioned that?”

“It must have slipped their minds,” Edward says with a wry laugh.

“Well,” Beckett says briskly, “the American colonies rebelled, and following their successful war for independence, a number of other places—including France—followed in their footsteps. With varying degrees of additional success, mind, to my understanding the French simply ended up putting anyone they didn’t like to the guillotine.”

“Ah,” Edward says blandly. “I can see where that might surprise even Mithras.”

“The world is changing faster than I would have thought,” Beckett says. “The events of recent decades seem to catch my older acquaintances rather frequently by surprise even when they have lived through them. But even then, that does beg the question of where Mithras actually is, and what he is doing, and why he hasn’t returned to his seat of power yet.”

“I haven’t got a clue, mate. I don’t make a point of understanding what goes on in the minds of Camarilla arseholes.”

At that, Beckett smiles. “I did miss you, old friend. This part of the world hasn’t been the same without you.”

Apparently he had not, in fact, exhausted his sentimentality for the century after all.

“Heh. It better not have been,” Edward says. “...Say, is Jack still around?”

Beckett nods. “Last I heard, he’s off doing what he does best off in America.”

“That’s good to hear.” Edward leans back in his chair and considers Beckett. “The sunglasses are new,” he observes.

He sighs. “A necessity, I’m afraid, given personal developments. Especially around kine.”

Edward nods. He knows a little about how the Gangrel can be inflicted with bestial traits after a frenzy. Sometimes permanently, sometimes not. “Aye, I doubt they’d react well to that. Is it permanent, then?”

“I’m afraid so,” Beckett says, sounding very put out.

“At least it’s something you can hide easily enough,” Edward says, not trying to hide his smirk. “It could have been wolf ears.”

Beckett shudders. “I’d need a hat. Or one of those hoods you favor.”

“Those haven’t gone out of style with the Assassins,” Edward comments. “It was nice to see that.”

“To my understanding,” Beckett says with a raised eyebrow, “they’ve been in style since long before either of us were born, let alone Embraced.”

“They have,” Edward agrees easily. “But things change, you know that.”

“That they do.” Beckett leans back in his chair, folding his hands—gloved, like they always are—in his lap. “So, now that you aren’t in torpor, what’s the plan? I can’t imagine there are many Assassins left that you knew.”

“There’s three in all of London, right now. Or four, I suppose,” he adds, with a brief gesture to himself. “So, for the moment... help them break the Templars’ hold here. Beyond that...” Edward closes his eyes for a moment. “I’d like to seek out Jenny and Haytham’s graves, I reckon. Say goodbye.”

“I believe your daughter is buried in London,” Beckett offers. “Your son... the American Assassins would likely know better than I.”

“...I see,” Edward says quietly. “Thank you.”

In response, Beckett silently nods, and says nothing more.

“Were any of you planning on telling me that the colonies rebelled?” Edward drawls, almost casually, in way of greeting as he returns to the train.

The downright alarmed look that Evie and Henry exchange is the funniest thing he’s seen since awakening from torpor, Edward decides.

“I... suppose you would have missed that, yes,” Henry says quietly.

“They did do that,” Evie agrees. “An Assassin was even on the front lines for the earlier parts of the war.”

And where there’s Assassins (or Templars) there’s always the other, Edward’s come to learn.

“Good,” Edward says, because he certainly has no love for the British. “Who was it?” he asks.

“...We aren’t entirely sure,” Evie admits, sounding suspiciously like she’d rather admit to anything but not knowing something. “Whoever it was didn’t see fit to take credit after the fact. There are theories, but...”

A humble one, clearly. Well, some Assassins must be, Edward supposes, even if he could never be the type. “Any particularly interesting ones?”

“One of the most popular is that it was Aveline de Grandpré, an Assassin renowned for her stealth and finesse in particular. Despite that not being where she normally operated, we do have records of her being in the area during at least some of the right time,” Evie says. “The other, and what personally I find more likely even if there is... much less evidence to support it...”

She hesitates. That... does not bode well.

“Yes?” Edward prompts all the same.

“Connor,” Evie says, more hesitantly. “That’s the name everything I’ve read refers to him as, at least, and while I don’t believe he ever referred to himself as such... his full name would have been Connor Kenway. He was Haytham’s son with a native woman.”

Edward isn’t sure that the train actually goes over a bump on the tracks, but he’s certainly going to blame that on the way he staggers and has to catch himself against the doorframe.

“My son was turned into a Templar, and his son became an Assassin,” he says, and he almost wants to laugh about it. The hysterical sort of laughter that gets people to look at you like you belong in Bedlam. He just about squashes the impulse. “Well, damn, that certainly explains why Beckett said the American Assassins would know where he was buried more than he would.”

“...Yes. He led the Colonial Templars, as well as—more briefly—their successors.” Evie pauses. “Who is Beckett?”

“An old friend I bumped into tonight,” Edward says. “He hasn’t changed much.”

“Ah,” she says, understanding dawning.

“He was... considerably more surprised to see me than I was to see him, I reckon,” Edward continues, managing a brief smile. “Though he wanders quite a bit, so I wasn’t expecting to find him in particular.”

“Is traveling not common for Kindred?” Evie asks.

“Well, only being able to move around at night does complicate matters somewhat,” Edward says. “Not to mention, animal blood isn’t...” He pauses over his word choice for a moment. “As satisfying,” he settles on. “And there can be a lack of people on the road.”

“There certainly can be,” Henry agrees. “Even more at night.”

“Not to mention, there’s the Lupines out in the wilderness,” Edward says thoughtfully.

Henry opens his mouth. He shuts it again.

“And those are?” Evie asks.

“Werewolves, essentially,” he replies.

“...Oh,” Evie says, with a look on her face that might actually top the one she’d had on earlier. “Is there anything... else we should be aware of?”

“You mean, what else is sneaking around at the fringes of human society with us Assassins?” Edward asks, giving her a wicked grin. He might be enjoying her obvious discomfort with the supernatural a little too much, but he’s earned some amusement, he thinks.

She sighs. “Yes.”

“Well, I wasn’t Kindred for all that long before... well. You know.” He clears his throat. “So I doubt I had time to learn all the secrets. But my sire did warn me about the Lupines, seeing as they evidently try to kill Kindred on sight, and typically win. And he mentioned something or other about human magic users. Something about ghosts. Faeries probably wouldn’t want to have anything to do with London, but they might be out there somewhere. The occult was never particularly Jack’s strong point, so he couldn’t exactly give me any details.”

“Knowing that they’re out there at all is better than the alternative,” Evie says, after a quick glance out the window of the train. Did she see something outside?

“There is that,” Edward agrees. “I doubt most of them will be all that interested in you, though.”

She breathes out slowly, something she does actually need to do. “Good.”

“There’s probably more overlap between the Assassins and Kindred than anyone else,” he muses. “We tend to occupy so many of the same areas. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the Brotherhood had recruited a mage or two, somewhere.”

Evie nods. “It does seem sometimes that the feats Assassins were historically described to have done shouldn’t have been possible.”

“Well, some of that likely has to do with so many of us coming from Those Who Came Before,” Edward says. “That’s unusual all on its own.”

“True,” Evie muses, and falls silent.

“Not that being descended from them is necessarily a... guarantee, of ability,” Henry says.

“No, but it doesn’t hurt,” Edward says.

Henry nods. And then he glances out the window, and he says, “Miss Frye, shouldn’t your brother—”

“He is either displaying uncharacteristic patience, or he is dawdling on his return,” Evie snaps, before she takes another deep breath and says, “Despite his flaws, he is a competent Assassin. Don’t worry about him, Mister Green.”

“Ah, but you’re worried too, lass,” Edward points out.

“I am not,” Evie says in a tone that really only proves his point.

Edward raises his eyebrows at her without a word. Henry, meanwhile, hides what looks suspiciously like a smile behind a hand.

“...He should be back by now,” Evie mutters, “but it wouldn’t be the first time he found a distraction on the way.”

“Want me to have a look around for him?” Edward offers.

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble...”

“‘Course not,” he says. “I said I’d help out, didn’t I?”

“Then by all means,” Evie says. “Jacob’s target is a man named John Elliotson. He works at the Lambeth Asylum.”

Edward eyes the map they’ve got pinned to the wall. Lambeth is easy enough to find, but as for the asylum itself...

“Where is it, exactly?” he asks, waving at the map.

“Right here,” Henry says, approaching it to point at one of a few spots in Lambeth marked recently with an X. “The building is fairly new, relatively speaking. Large and distinctive.”

“Good to know,” Edward says, nodding to Henry. “Suppose I’ll be off, then.”

Henry begins to nod back, then suddenly says, “Wait. Before you go...”

Evie looks briefly as confused as Edward feels as Henry crosses the carriage to where he’d put his bag, rummaging through it before he produces... some kind of mechanism that Edward can’t say he recognizes, but Evie clearly does.

“Oh! Is that from Mister Bell?” Evie says, and receives a nod.

“Attach this to your bracer,” Henry says, holding it out to Edward. “It’s a rope launcher. Should help with navigating.”

“Fascinating,” Edward says as he accepts it. “Cheers, mate.”

Henry nods. “Not that you need it, but... nice to have, I’ve been told.”

“Very,” Evie agrees, with feeling.

Has it occurred to either of them that he’s never used one of these before? Probably not.

“Jacob has one as well, I’m guessing?” Edward asks.

If he does, Edward will just watch how he uses it before having a go at it himself. Save himself some embarrassment that way.

“He does, yes,” Henry confirms.

“Good to know.”

The thing attaches nicely to his bracer, at least. And, with a final nod to Evie and Henry, Edward makes his escape from the train about as quickly as he can manage without it looking like he’s actively fleeing.

The actual assassination went quite cleanly, if Jacob does say so himself.

The escape, he has to admit, could have done with some work. As it is, he’s currently hiding on a rooftop near the asylum, contemplating if he feels like taking on ten Blighters on his own. They know he’s in the area, but none of the idiots have thought to look up, so they’ve missed him crouched on the roof like a gargoyle. Normally, he’d jump in without hesitation, but the guards in the asylum itself already caused him some problems, and he’s aching enough as it is.

And then someone else enters the alleyway. Someone who Jacob pings as dimly familiar, mostly from the hood he’s wearing—and then he realizes that’s one of his hoods.

“Say, lads, looking for someone?” Edward’s voice carries high enough for him to hear.

So does the response from one of the Blighters. “Yeah, but you’ll do. Get him!”

Jacob’s mouth drops open at the display that follows.

Edward throws himself forward at a speed that cannot be human, slamming his fist into the face of the Blighter that spoke hard enough for the crunch of bone to be audible from Jacob’s perch. The man’s head snaps back at an unnatural angle, and he collapses to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

The remaining nine Blighters gawk at him for a moment, before deciding to make an attempt at avenging their fallen friend. And it goes even more poorly for them, as Edward unsheathes his hidden blade and darts around their attacks effortlessly.

Jacob also spends some time gawking. And then one of the Blighters decides to try making a run for it. He doesn’t get far before Jacob leaps off the roof and uses the Blighter’s body to break his fall, sinking his hidden blade into the man’s neck for good measure.

Edward dusts his hands off and looks around at the carnage he’s just created. “Been a while since I’ve been in a proper fight,” he comments.

That was him out of practice?

“How did you do that?” Jacob asks.

Edward drifts a little closer before he answers, and Jacob finds himself standing up straighter on instinct. “Being Kindred comes with some perks,” he says, grinning.

Jacob whistles. “I can see that.”

“Of course, it also means I can never see the sun again, but,” Edward shrugs, “I chose this. And I don’t regret it.”

He crouches beside the nearest corpse and begins rifling through the various pockets in the Blighter’s clothes. “So who are these bastards, anyway?”

“They’re the Blighters,” Jacob says derisively. “Starrick’s gang. My Rooks have beaten them out of Whitechapel, and we’ll get them out of Lambeth next.”

Edward makes a noise of acknowledgment as he pockets some money that used to belong to the Blighter. “How did the assassination go?” he asks.

Jacob is most of the way through describing how he’d pretended to be a dead body and given Elliotson the scare of his life before killing him when he remembers he hadn’t actually told Edward anything about what he was doing tonight. Actually, he hadn’t seen him at all tonight until now.

Edward looks up from the last body, which he’d been looting, when Jacob trails off, and raises an eyebrow at whatever the look on his face is. “What is it, lad?”

“How’d you know it was an assassination?” Jacob asks. There’s two answers he can think of: either he’d overheard something after all the ruckus, or Evie told him.

(...Or he just somehow knew. That’s a possibility. Make that three.)

“From your sister,” Edward replies. “She denied it, but she was worried about how long it was taking you to return.”

“Right,” Jacob scoffs. “She was worried that I’d ruin her perfect plans.”

Edward looks at him seriously. “Listen, lad. I can’t claim to know her all that well. But it did seem like she was actually worried. Henry certainly was.”

“Eh, Greenie’s alright. Likes my sister better than me, but who doesn’t?”

Edward chuckles. “You remind me of myself when I was your age,” he says, halfway to himself.

Jacob can’t help it. He laughs too. “Do I really?”

“Aye,” he agrees. “And that’s not a bad thing.”

See, Jacob didn’t think he did mean it as an insult, but the confirmation wasn’t something he was expecting to hear.

“That,” he begins, then shakes his head. “Would love to see what the Council thought of you.”

Edward snorts and shakes his head. “When I was younger, the Assassin leadership had it out for me. And I fully deserved every bit of it.”

“You can’t have deserved all of it,” Jacob says.

“I didn’t know a damn thing about the conflict between them and the Templars, and I sold the Templars maps leading directly to the Assassins.”

Jacob whistles. “Alright, well, maybe you did. Don’t tell Evie about that part.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Edward says wryly. “We ought to head back for now, I reckon.”

He nods, and aims his rope launcher for the roof. It’s only once he’s already on the roof that he remembers that, unless one of the perks being Kindred comes with is flying, it might take Edward a little longer.

To his great surprise, Edward joins him on the roof moments later, with the familiar sound of a rope launcher in use. “Henry gave me this before I left the train,” he says, tapping the bracer.

Jacob grins. “Handy, isn’t it?”

“Definitely,” Edward says, grinning back.

Chapter Text

Evie cannot seem to shake the feeling that she has made some sort of mistake, and she can’t for the life of her figure out why. She doesn’t make mistakes often. When she does, she fixes them promptly. But doing so is much easier said than done when she hasn’t the slightest idea of what she has actually done wrong.

Finding a not-quite-dead Edward Kenway in the secret basement of the Kenway Mansion was unexpected, to say the least, but Evie would like to think she handled it as well as she could have given the unprecedented circumstances. And she has managed to keep the last Assassins in London from looking like complete fools in front of a legend. A legend that, admittedly, is... not quite what Evie would have expected, from the stories of him.

She’s not at all sure what her father would have thought, had he awakened Edward sooner. But she knows one thing, and it’s that he would have at least been able to figure out what she’s done wrong, to make Edward Kenway look at her like that for suggesting that they secure the Shroud of Eden before the Templars can.

“Lass,” Edward says slowly, “I’ve known you less than a week. I’m not just going to lead you directly to where I hid something that powerful. You’ve got to earn it.”

...Ah. And that would be the mistake Evie made. A part of her wants to argue that the Templars won’t wait for her to earn his trust. She buries it deep.

“I apologize for presuming,” she says. “Where do I begin?”

“Not what I meant,” Edward says, “but I do like the enthusiasm.”

Oh. Then what did he—

“I wasn’t exactly planning to be involved anymore,” Edward goes on before she can ask, reaching into his coat. “What I left behind won’t lead you right to where I hid it. But you’re more than capable of puzzling it out for yourself.”

He holds out... those are the papers he’d taken from the basement room. The metal disc she’d seen him take, however, isn’t among them.

“Have a go at this,” Edward says as she accepts the papers with a slow nod, “and we’ll see where you’re at when I get back.”

“Where are you going?” Evie asks.

“Hunting,” he replies, standing and brushing himself off. “Can’t go too long without it.”

Her face must do something unfortunate, from the chuckle Edward lets out as he turns away. By the time she’s schooled it into something approaching neutrality, there’s little point to it anymore.

She takes a deep breath, and begins to read what seems at a glance to be Assassin history she already knows. Ezio Auditore’s account of his travels to Masyaf, and then beyond it to Constantinople... she knows this story. Every Assassin worth the blade they bear knows this story. So why...

Her mind drifts back to the disc. There is no possible way that Edward left that out by accident. And while there were several noteworthy aspects of that journey, Evie can’t help but recall that the most prominent was locating strange, disc-shaped keys that Altaïr had left behind.

This cannot be a coincidence.

She tries to focus on the pages in front of her, but for the first time, she fully understands Jacob’s frustrations with lessons. She doesn’t appreciate being patronized, and it feels like that’s precisely what Edward’s doing to her now.

There’s likely some rationale beyond that that she’s not following—he was a Master Assassin, before he spent one hundred and thirty-three years with a stake in his chest—but that doesn’t help Evie any with determining what that rationale is.

Evie takes a deep breath. And then she tucks the papers away—no sense in leaving them behind, and they’ll be safest on her person—and makes for the door. She isn’t entirely certain how much time has passed since Edward left, but if she can pick up his trail...

It’s entirely possible that he is, in fact, just hunting as he said he would be. But Evie can’t shake the feeling that he isn’t.

Picking up the trail of someone who doesn’t want to be followed is easier said than done. Evie’s been trained to do exactly that, as an Assassin. She has no intention of failing now, even if he’s an Assassin too. She’s more cautious than even she usually would be in tailing him. At a time like this, she can’t be too careful.

...It doesn’t seem that he was lying, because the trail leads first to a dead Blighter—killed with a single lethal stab from behind by a hidden blade. While Evie has no way to verify this, she suspects the dead man has less blood in him than the average corpse would. But Edward didn’t circle back toward the train from there. Evie frowns before she continues to follow.

The trail from there leads toward the monument memorializing the Great Fire of London. And while Evie can’t see well in the night, she can faintly make out a dark shape ascending the central column. That has to be Edward.

He climbs to the very top of the monument, and begins doing... something with the sculpture. From this distance, in the dark, she can’t tell what, exactly, but he shuffles around the side and looks off into the distance.

She’s not quite sure, but Evie thinks he might have nodded to himself before shuffling back, undoing whatever he just did, and taking a leap of faith off the top of the monument into a conveniently-placed cart of leaves.

Edward hops out of the leaves, brushes himself off, and darts back toward the base of the monument once more. And the night is quiet enough for Evie to hear some mechanical clicking. Perhaps he was checking if the mechanism still worked.

Evie is curious about whatever he was checking up there. But she’s more curious about where he might be heading off to next.

...Which turns out to be St. Paul’s Cathedral, of all the places.

He scales the outside of the cathedral without hesitation, making use of the rope launcher that Henry—Mister Green—had gotten for him to speed his passage.

Evie loses sight of him for a moment, but Eagle Vision helps her locate him as he crouches down at the base of a statue overlooking the square in front of the cathedral. She’s too far back to make out any detail, but she’d be willing to wager that the item he pulls from inside his coat is, in fact, the disc he’d withheld from her earlier.

She can’t risk getting close enough to see exactly what he’s doing, but it can’t have been more than a minute before he looks up. High above him, there’s movement on the cathedral’s main tower—some kind of hatch opening?

This time, he doesn’t undo what he did before. Instead, he climbs. Evie waits until he’s vanished from view before she makes for the statue herself. The disc is indeed still there, embedded into its base to reveal what appears to be some sort of puzzle involving several gears. That explains what Edward was doing here.

She considers the puzzle for a moment longer, then runs along the roof toward the central tower. Maybe, if she can prove to him that she’s trustworthy, that she’s not seeking the Shroud for its power...

Evie isn’t entirely sure how she’s going to do that yet, but she at least wants to see what that mechanism led to.

Of course, when she hauls herself into the room after him, Edward’s already looking directly at her. So much for a stealthy approach. And the look he gives her reminds her so much of the stern ones her father would deliver on occasion that she feels chastised before he even says a word.

“...I can explain,” she says, before she thinks of how.

“Let’s hear it then, lass,” Edward says, raising his eyebrows.

Evie regrets everything in her life that led her up to this point. She opens her mouth, then shuts it again without a word. He’ll likely know it if she tries to lie, and the truth is... as ashamed of it as she is, it’s better than nothing.

“I... recalled that you’d taken something else out of the basement,” Evie admits at last, because she has nothing better. “I’m sorry for following you.”

Edward’s sigh holds a significant amount of weariness.

“Well,” he says at last, “you may as well come and take a look at it, since you’re here.”

He beckons her closer. Evie approaches. Lying there, upon a dust-covered plinth is... a necklace, of all things. The centerpiece, a rectangular piece of metal, must be a key. To the vault? Or to another puzzle?

...Considering the trail there was to make it here, Evie would put even odds on either.

“It’s going to stay here for now,” he says, a significant amount of sternness in his voice. “And I’m going to close all this up again when we leave.”

“I understand,” Evie says, taking a step back. Her face burns with shame. “At least the Templars will not—”

It’s at that precise moment, as if the universe has decided to laugh at her, that someone hits her from behind, knocking her roughly to the floor. She barely moves an arm in time to stop her head from colliding much too fast with the floor, but there’s that, at least. Heart sinking, she looks up just in time to see—

“Good evening, Miss Frye,” says the absolute last person that Evie wanted to see right now, who already has the necklace in hand. “I’ll be taking that.”

And without further ado, Lucy Thorne leaps through the nearby window. Glass shatters. Evie drags herself to her feet. Something’s wrong. Her head swims. But she cannot let Thorne get away.

Edward curses viciously, and Evie expects to see him tear off after her. He takes a step in that direction. And then he falters.

Instead, he turns toward Evie... and catches her as her legs buckle beneath her, two equally-surprising turns of events.

“Shit, don’t pass out on me,” he mutters.

“Thorne cannot have the key,” Evie replies. “I can take care of myself. Go!”

Why is it suddenly so hard for her to move? She shouldn’t be this weak. She isn’t this weak. Unless—Thorne must have done something. Some new power of the Templars that Evie should have seen coming.

(Whatever it is, that doesn’t matter. If she can’t go after Thorne, then Edward needs to. It’s as simple as that.)

“You can take care of being stabbed in the back on your own?” Edward asks, in a tone that is all but calling her an idiot.

...Oh. That—she would know if she’d been stabbed. Wouldn’t she?

“Thorne... she cannot get to the Shroud because I—ah!”

This is not how she expected being stabbed to feel. But it certainly hurts enough when she makes the mistake of trying to move forward.

“I’ll track her down later,” he says. “For now, we need to get you to a doctor.”

Thorne is nearly as good at disappearing as an Assassin would be. If he doesn’t go now, they might never get that key back, and it will be entirely Evie’s fault that they lost it to begin with.

“You have to...”

She closes her eyes for a moment. Only a moment, and yet the next thing she knows, she is certainly not in that hidden room anymore.

She’s not entirely sure how Edward got them away from the cathedral, but they’re down on street level now, and he’s carrying her like she weighs nothing.

“Try and stay awake, lass,” he says. She’s going to blame the blood loss for how worried he sounds, she thinks.

Speaking is difficult. But she has to say something.

“...Don’t tell... Jacob about this,” she forces out. “...Please.”

He doesn’t reply, but that may have more to do with the fact that he’s clearly set eyes on a doctor’s office of some description, to judge by the way he speeds up.

Evie can’t tell if she’s imagining them moving faster than a human can move or not.

She blinks again. Edward’s shouldering open a door. A voice she doesn’t recognize is speaking to him.

“Set her down here, quickly!”

Being set down hurts, because it jostles the wound in her back.

“I know, I know,” Edward says to her quietly. “Hurts like a bitch, I remember.”

Evie nods, because she does not have any more words in her at the moment, and grits her teeth. She very resolutely does not scream when the doctor he’s brought her to starts to do... something with the stab wound in her back.

(The fact that she had initially thought she was only shoved... that was incredibly foolish of her. Only the latest in a long line of questionable decisions she has made tonight, before the consequences of said decisions took even that away from her.)

Edward holds her hand through it, even though she must have a crushing grip on his fingers. He barely even flinches.

She still feels terrible by the time the doctor says, “There. She will live, though I would advise her against any strenuous physical activity in the near future.”

Dimly, it occurs to Evie that the unfamiliar voice she has been hearing belongs to a woman.

“Aye,” Edward says. “I think we can manage that.”

Evie breathes out slowly and says, “Thank you, Miss...?”

“Nightingale,” the woman says, coming around into her field of view with a smile. “You will be alright, miss. You’re fortunate that your father brought you here so quickly.”

Whatever Evie was going to say screeches to an abrupt halt. She opens her mouth, closes it again, and utterly fails to come up with a single word to say in response to that.

Edward, meanwhile, at least maintains enough of his faculties to say something, which is a good deal more than Evie can say for herself.

“Oh, ah, is—that’s what you thought?” he says, running a hand through his hair.

Miss Nightingale looks to him, then looks back to Evie with a puzzled expression on her face. “Oh, I thought... are you her uncle, then?”

Evie’s actual father was an only child, as was her mother, but pointing either of those facts out does not seem to be the best use of her time right now.

Explaining that he’s well over one hundred and fifty years old is decidedly not an option, so Evie can’t fault Edward for replying, “Something like that.”

Evie is seriously considering the merits of pretending to pass out again, or perhaps even actually falling unconscious, before Edward clears his throat and says, “Up you get, lass, let’s get you home.”

...Oh. Oh no. How is she going to make it back onto the train when she can barely walk?

(Jacob was off looking into omnibuses, of all things, when she left the train tonight. Evie has personally never hoped for him to dawdle more.)

Much to Evie’s dismay, Jacob is not off dawdling somewhere when Edward physically carries her back onto the train at the nearest station. He’s got a cocky grin on his face, but it quickly vanishes as he looks between her face and Edward’s.

“...The hell happened to you?” he asks while Edward gingerly sets her on her own two feet, sounding rather horrified.

Does she look that terrible?

“Templars,” Evie mutters, and at least manages to stagger to the sofa under her own power before more or less collapsing onto it. “...One Templar. Do not let your guard down around Lucy Thorne.”

“I should’ve been paying more attention,” Edward says as he leans against the wall, crossing his arms. “It wasn’t just you, lass.”

No, but it was entirely her fault that they were there—and quite possibly led Thorne directly to the key—to begin with. Because she wasn’t patient enough to wait.

(She will not be admitting any of this in front of Jacob, not least of which because he would have tailed Edward with even less hesitation than Evie.)

“We need to get the key back,” Evie says. “She’s likely vanished by now, but if she hasn’t...”

“The key’s no good without the location of the Shroud,” Edward points out. “The Templars don’t have that yet.”

“...True,” Evie admits. “They do not.”

(And there is not a chance of Edward being willing to share that location with her until he absolutely has to, not after the events of tonight.)

Jacob waves a hand dismissively. “So let’s work on rooting those bastards out of Lambeth, eh?” he says, grinning.

At the moment, her brother being himself is a welcome distraction.

“There isn’t much left to do before the Templar overseeing Lambeth has no choice but to emerge from hiding,” Evie says thoughtfully, running through what they have accomplished in her head. “We’ve brought Abberline who he wants, and assassinated... hmm... Jacob, have you had the chance to track down Martin Church yet?”

Little as she would like to admit it, the odds are vanishingly unlikely of her being able to do that herself anytime soon.

“Dealt with Echostreet Alley today,” he says, shaking his head before he adds, pride in his voice, “The Rooks are setting up shop already.”

Evie finds herself smiling, despite herself. “Then that leaves Battersea Bellows, Church, and a factory we have it on good authority from Clara is relying heavily on the labor of children.”

Then the borough’s overseer himself, but that part is a given.

Something very dark flashes across Edward’s face at Evie’s words.

“Children?” he repeats sharply.

She nods. “Our contact, Miss O’Dea, has organized the various orphans and urchins within London—of which there are many, it seems—into an extensive network of spies. In return for her intelligence, we agreed to free the child workers in factories across the city and put an end to those holding them there, which seemed a more than satisfactory arrangement to me.”

Though it has seemed that information on Lambeth has come slower than it did for Whitechapel, now that Evie thinks upon it...

“I see,” Edward says in a dangerously level tone. “Would you like a hand with that?” he asks.

Evie considers this before nodding again—she’s unlikely to be able to do much herself in the near future herself, unfortunately, courtesy of Lucy Thorne. “The factory in Lambeth is called Strain & Boil. It is a cotton mill—you’ll need to kill the overseer as well.”

Given his previous reactions, Evie doubts that will be a problem.

“If you happen to see Clara,” she goes on, “tell her you’re with us. She’s a very bright young woman. Dark hair she wears in braids, and I have never seen her without a green dress.”

He nods agreeably. “It’s getting a bit close to sunrise for that now, but tomorrow night...” He flicks the hidden blade into view briefly before retracting it once more.

“Thank you,” she says. “I don’t expect I will be of much use in the near future.”

“I’m sure we’ll find something for you to do,” Edward says. “Put that brain of yours to work.”

And hopefully Jacob won’t manage to get into too much trouble without her in the field.

“The liberation of Lambeth is in sight, at the very least,” Evie says, looking between her brother and Edward. She tries for another smile. She... isn’t entirely certain of how much she succeeds.

“Aye, that it is,” Edward agrees.

“We’ll take those bastards out in no time,” Jacob grins.

“Despite the best efforts of the Assassins, I have in my possession the key to Kenway’s vault,” Lucy Thorne says briskly, because neither she nor Crawford particularly care for pleasantries when there is business to be done. “There is, however, a complication I thought you should be made aware of.”

He sets aside the letter he had been reading when she entered his office.

“I’m listening, Miss Thorne,” he says, folding his hands together on his desk.

“There is another Assassin. Not a Frye, and not Green.” In turn, Lucy folds her hands behind her back.

“Only one other?” Crawford clarifies.

She nods. “What concerns me is the fact that none of our intelligence provides the slightest clue as to who he is, let alone where he came from—or how much of a threat he may be.”

His brow furrows for just a moment. “Have you encountered him directly?”

“Tonight,” she informs him. “He was discussing the key with Miss Frye before I took it. Had I not had the misfortune of encountering Ethan Frye personally before his death, I might have thought it to be him—he certainly looked old enough to be her father.”

“Hm.” Crawford looks at her steadily. “Perhaps they summoned another Assassin from that... council of theirs, in Crawley.”

“It’s possible,” she allows, though that still doesn’t seem quite right. “He doesn’t match any of the descriptions we have, but our intelligence has always been weaker there.”

“They spend so much time scurrying in the shadows like rats,” Crawford says. “Once we have the Shroud, we will root them out of England altogether.”

Lucy allows herself a smile. “That we shall.”

She isn’t under any illusions that Miss Frye is dead—she wouldn’t be unless she’d seen a body for herself, and stabbing her had proved precisely the distraction she needed. But it will be rather difficult for her to continue her hunt for the Shroud while recovering, and at least those Assassins who are a known quantity—Frye’s brother, Green—are foolish enough to have their priorities elsewhere.

Good. The Assassins don’t deserve it.

Chapter Text

Strain & Boil looks normal enough, from the outside, Edward thinks. Not that he’s entirely clear on what a cotton mill is—one of many things that are entirely new to him after so long in torpor—but in this case, he doesn’t have to be.

This likely won’t be so different from the plantations he used to raid, back in his pirate days. First, he’ll have to take out the guards and track down the overseer. Once they’re out of the way, he can get the children out of the factory without interference.

The guards are kind enough to be very obvious, even without Eagle Vision—killing them and hiding the bodies might as well be child’s play. The bastard running the place, unfortunately, is a little trickier to locate, something that leads Edward into the building proper.

...It was one thing to hear that the factory was relying on children for its labor. It’s another entirely to see just how young some of them are.

The oldest of them can barely be more than the age Haytham was the night Edward was staked—a thought that sends a pang through him for an entirely different reason.

He shakes the thought off after a moment, because he can’t afford to become distracted now and put them at risk.

“...Excuse me, mister?” one of them whispers as he’s reaching for the door to what he thinks is the overseer’s office, and if Edward’s heart was still beating, it probably would have stopped. “Did Clara send you?”

“Aye, she did,” he whispers back. It’s not strictly true, but she did send the Fryes, and the Fryes sent him, and that’s not something he wants to explain in a whispered conversation at the moment. “Keep quiet for a moment while I take care of the overseer, alright?”

The child—a little girl—nods and slinks back over to her machine, though she doesn’t get back to work in favor of watching him.

She’s blonde. And she looks just enough like Jenny did, at her age, for Edward’s heart to ache. Edward closes his eyes, takes a breath he doesn’t need, and reaches for the door. He eases it open just far enough to slip inside, then shuts it behind him.

The overseer is alone, which isn’t his first mistake but it—along with the fact that he isn’t observant enough to have noticed Edward yet—could easily be his last. He could take a stealthy approach. Probably should take a stealthy approach.

But over the sound of the machinery outside, no one would hear him scream, would they?

He seriously considers it for a moment—and then decides it’s too great of a risk, when it’s children he’s rescuing. Still, he puts far more force behind the blow than is actually necessary to kill the man, and he enjoys it.

There’s not really much point to hiding the body, given how much splatter resulted and the fact that Jacob’s Rooks will be in here later to clean up what he doesn’t, so he leaves it once he’s reasonably sure that the mess left behind wouldn’t be impossible for a mortal to have pulled off.

Then, it’s back to the children. The little blonde girl’s watching with interest as he shuts the door behind him, before she asks very bluntly, “Did you kill him?”

He’s covered in blood, so there’s no point in denying it. “Yes,” he replies, just as bluntly.

“Good,” she says with a nod. “What should we do now, mister?”

Edward considers the question. “Let’s gather everyone up, then contact the Rooks,” he decides.

That part goes smoothly, at least. The little girl with blonde hair seems to be the closest thing to a leader the children in the factory have, judging by how quickly she’s able to locate everyone else, and even in the absence of their leader, Jacob’s Rooks know what they’re doing. It’s enough that, after a few minutes, Edward decides he can leave them to it and go pay a visit to Clara O’Dea himself.

That blonde girl—whose name Edward should have made a better effort at catching, he realizes in hindsight—mentioned that Clara was likely to be near the asylum.

Edward wasn’t expecting Clara O’Dea to also be a child, but that’s his own fault for not asking for more details than Evie had given him.

“Hello there, lass,” he says by way of greeting.

Clara startles a bit, squinting suspiciously at him. “Hello.”

“Jacob and Evie Frye sent me,” he says, keeping his hands where she can see them.

He sees the way her gaze darts across his outfit. Whatever she sees there, it’s apparently enough to satisfy her.

“You aren’t either of them,” she says, accurately. “Who are you?”

“Call me Edward,” he says. Volunteering his last name seems... unwise, given both the Masquerade and the Templars.

She nods slowly. “It’s nice to meet you. Were you responsible for Strain & Boil, then?”

“I was,” he agrees.

Clara brightens. “Oh, good. One less factory to worry about, though... I would have expected Miss Frye? Is she alright?”

She seems very well-spoken for a... thirteen-year-old, perhaps, if she’s not younger than that.

Edward considers how much he ought to tell her.

“She was... hurt badly, but she’ll recover,” he settles on. “But for now, she’s keeping off her feet. That’s why she sent me.”

He has the strangest feeling that Clara knows he’s understating things. She holds his gaze for a moment longer, then nods.

“Very well, she says. “Your being here is a pleasant surprise. Would you be willing to—”

And then she starts to cough.

Edward frowns. “Are you alright?” he asks.

“Of course I am, mister,” she says, with a look in her eyes that reminds him of Evie. “I have to be. The children in my care are falling ill, our usual tonics are not working, but I thought perhaps there might be something... something left...”

It’s probably only thanks to Celerity that Edward manages to lurch forward in time to catch her. He hoists her up into his arms.

“Hello?” he calls. “Is there a doctor nearby?”

To his immense surprise, the door to the supposedly abandoned asylum opens. A face he faintly recognizes stares at him, mouth falling open.

“I thought I recognized your voice,” says Miss Nightingale, apparently choosing not to question anything else about this situation.

“...Well, that answers that question,” Edward declares, before nodding to the girl in his arms. “She collapsed suddenly.”

“Oh dear,” Nightingale says. “Bring her inside.”

Edward does, and lays her down where Nightingale indicates. “She mentioned something about the normal tonics not working.”

Nightingale visibly scowls, laying a hand on Clara’s forehead.

“I should think not! Ever since Elliotson was murdered, the district has been overrun with counterfeit tonics. This one,” she nods to Clara, “needs proper care, but without the appropriate medication, she and the others will quickly decline.”

Edward suppresses the urge to sigh. Sounds like he’ll need to have a word with Jacob later.

“What can I do?” he asks.

Getting supplies and medicine for Nightingale is much easier said than done, to put it lightly—he hadn’t expected to have to steal back a cart with fragile cargo—but he manages it. So, once he’s secured a promise from Nightingale to help Clara as well as the other children, there’s enough hours left in the night for him to go looking for Jacob.

It takes a while, but it turns out that Jacob’s down near the Thames. And when Edward finds him, he’s crouched over a body, and looking deeply perturbed.

“Wouldn’t have thought you to be the type to get squeamish over your kills, lad,” Edward says idly.

“I’m not,” Jacob says, still staring at the body.

“What’s the matter, then?”

He withdraws a handkerchief, dabbing it in the dead man’s blood before he pockets it and stands, turning toward Edward.

“Let’s say you have two omnibus companies,” Jacob says. “One’s owned by Starrick. So you decide, perhaps it’s time you go into business with his competitor.”

Edward considers asking what an omnibus is, then decides that’s probably not the point.

“Go on,” he says.

“She doesn’t quite get how you work, and her first impression is that you’re there to kill her, but she comes up with a plan to turn the tables on Starrick’s man. You destroy her competitor’s buses, you steal the future itself, and finally you kill the man himself.”

Jacob nods to the body.

“And as he’s dying, he tells you that she and Starrick are family. That family always stays together, in the end,” he goes on. “Sounds a lot to me like we need to have a real conversation.”

“...Aye, that sounds like something worth looking into,” Edward agrees.

The fact that Jacob seems to have a talent for getting into trouble that rivals Edward’s own, back in the day, is not a comforting thought.

“Wouldn’t say no to company,” Jacob says.

Well, that’s an invitation if Edward’s ever heard one.

“I’ve nowhere else I’m needed tonight,” he says.

And sticking close to Jacob gives him an opportunity to have a word with him. (This does seem to take priority, though.)

Jacob retraces his steps first, to where he’d apparently spoken with one Pearl Attaway last. She isn’t there. She is, however, not far off.

“That’s her,” Jacob whispers, nodding toward a dark-haired woman wearing an expensive-looking purple dress. “What are you up to now, Pearl?”

At a glance, what she’s up to is slipping into a warehouse after a quick look around to see if she was being followed. She did not, however, look up.

(And it’s dubious whether she would have seen either of them if she did.)

It’s easy enough to slip after her, and sneaking along with Jacob is easy. And, when they get inside, a voice that has to belong to Attaway is saying, “I was certain he knew that I belonged to the Order and was there to end me.”

Beside him, Jacob winces.

“Imagine my delight when he told me his true purpose,” she continues. “An Assassin helping the Templar cause! Isn’t that delicious?”

That’s familiar, and not in a good way. Even over a century later, Edward remembers—and regrets—what he’d done while pretending to be Duncan Walpole. He hadn’t been an Assassin then, and wouldn’t become one until years later.

(Attaway can’t have thought she’d keep Jacob from finding out forever. Even if she did... it’s a damn good thing that Jacob caught on now.)

“It’s sickening,” says a man’s voice.

“Who’s he?” Edward asks under his breath.

“Starrick,” Jacob replies grimly.

“It’s business, cousin,” Attaway says dismissively. “Look at the big picture. With Millner gone, I own the only omnibus company left in London. We already have a monopoly on English transportation; the moment your engines power my buses, we’ll be legends!”

That sounds like Templars alright. Power and control. And Jacob accidentally played right into their hands. (It’s still not as bad as what Edward had done.)

“That was my plan from the start, with Millner,” Starrick says, irritation clear in his voice. “You forced my hand with your clever little train robbery.”

Edward is going to assume the train robbery in question was Jacob’s work.

“Crawford, I thought a reconciliation was in order. Do you have no happy memories of our childhood? Summers in Midford? You and I, down by the brook...”

“This is a formal meeting, Pearl,” Starrick replies stiffly. “Your sentimentality is unbecoming.”

“Unbecoming?!” Attaway snaps. “I’ve had to hear that odious word dribble from men’s lips all my life. Refusing to marry is unbecoming. Refusing to allow a man to conduct my affairs is unbecoming. How unfortunate that I didn’t accept your hand in marriage all those years ago.”

Edward feels his eyebrows raise as her tirade continues.

“How easy things would be for you now. The omnibuses would be yours by right and I would be at home, acting as hostess to your guests instead of standing here being so... unbecoming!”

“It always ends this way with you, Pearl,” Starrick says wearily. “I wish it were not so.”

“You glower too much, cousin,” Attaway replies. “You will get your engines back. Our new motorized buses will bring us both a lot of money.”

Well, they can’t have that. The only thing worse than a powerful Templar, in Edward’s experience, is a powerful Templar with lots of money. Shame those qualities tend to go hand in hand.

“I’ll need to arrange proper transport for the engines to get back to my factory,” Starrick says at last. “I want you at Waterloo, personally, to ensure that nothing goes wrong.”

“Of course. May the Father of Understanding guide us.”

“Today and in all of our future endeavors, cousin,” Starrick replies.

“Waterloo Station,” Jacob mutters under his breath.

“What are you planning, lad?” Edward whispers to him.

“End of the line. I stole those engines once, and I know just the man to do it again. And then...”

He glares in the direction of the conversation they’d just listened in on.

Edward sighs softly. Now isn’t the time or place to have the conversation he wants to have with Jacob.

“Try to keep a low profile,” he says instead. “I’m going to tail Starrick.”

Jacob looks surprised, but nods before they part ways. Him going after Attaway, and Edward...

...Well. Thorne works for Starrick, doesn’t she? It’s unlikely that he’ll lead Edward directly to her or to the key she’d taken, but odds are he’ll still get something out of the effort.

Crawford Starrick turns out to be a man in his forties, if Edward had to guess, with a ridiculous mustache and a very ostentatious Templar cross worn around his neck. He wears a scarf colored the same purple of Attaway’s dress. And he carries himself with an arrogance that sets Edward’s teeth on edge.

Once, Edward would have picked his pocket, just for the principle of the matter.

Now, he doesn’t dare to get too close. But he follows all the same.

Edward can’t say he’s surprised when Starrick’s trail leads to an incredibly expensive-looking house in the Strand. If anything, he’s more surprised that the man went directly home, though it is getting to be very late by kine standards. He waits outside for a time, to see if Starrick will leave again, then has a look around for a window he can get open easily.

The second he touches the window, he recoils with a hiss. It’s not the only thing hissing—there’s smoke curling off of his fingers, which makes the Beast rear in his chest, though Edward manages to shove it back down before he frenzies and runs off down the street.

Warded, then. That... may pose a few issues.

Warded against Kindred, no less, which means that someone high up among London’s Templars knows what they’re doing much too well for Edward’s tastes. They’d have to be, to have warded Starrick’s home. With his luck, it’s likely warded against unknown kine as well, so sending either of the Fryes in would be out if there weren’t other reasons he’d have preferred to do that himself.

Damn shame. There’ll be no getting at anything in there like this.

He almost wants to put a brick through the window on principle, but that would just make the Templars even more edgy than they already were, so he dismisses the thought as more childish than helpful.

In the meantime, it’s back to the train, as little as he likes the iron beast.

Henry hadn’t known what to expect out of either of the Frye twins before meeting them. Certainly, Jacob is—perhaps quite deliberately—nothing like his father. Evie, on the other hand, is emphatically her father’s daughter: studious, determined, and focused nearly to a fault.

Her dedication is admirable most of the time. More recently, though, it has begun to grow concerning—even more so, when she is certainly not resting as much as the doctor ordered and all but nodding off in her seat.

“With Mister Kenway taking care of Strain & Boil, and Jacob doing... whatever it is he is up to with omnibuses,” Evie muses aloud, “that leaves relatively little. Though I’ll admit I’m beginning to worry—have you heard much from Clara lately, Mister Green?”

“I’m sure Mister Kenway will seek her out after he’s done at the factory,” Henry replies as he tries to figure out the most delicate way to order Evie Frye to go to bed.

“...I hope so,” Evie says. “I’d been meaning to do so myself, and then...”

And then she got stabbed in the back by Lucy Thorne, yes. Which was not at all the news Henry expected to make it onto the train to this evening.

(He’s gotten, in bits and pieces, the general idea of what happened last night. Enough to be very glad that Evie wasn’t alone there, because she might not be sitting here now if she had been, and Henry has known her for long enough to be aware that he will miss her keenly when she is gone.)

“Yes,” Henry says quietly. “But with that in mind... perhaps you should rest.”

Evie shakes her head, which is about what he expected. “Not yet. I can sleep later.”

“You will not recover without proper rest,” Henry tries anyway.

She sighs, and sets the paper she was reading down. “Believe me, I know. I’ll rest once we know how the liberation of Lambeth has proceeded tonight.”

Which could very well be hours, if she intends to wait for both Edward and Jacob to return.

Henry sighs. “I believe it will proceed the same with or without your being awake.”

“...True enough,” she admits after a long pause, which feels like progress. The fact that she doesn’t pick up the paper again feels like more, before she turns her gaze upon him and asks, more tentatively, “If I cannot—would you be willing to wait up in my stead?”

He nods.

“I will,” he agrees.

Evie breathes out slowly, and stands, though it doesn’t escape his notice that she is leaning rather heavily on the sofa. “Thank you, Henry.”

His heart skips a beat.

“You are welcome, Miss Frye,” he says softly. “Rest well.”

She nods, and makes her way to the sleeping carriage, leaning on furniture or walls where she must, but otherwise holding her own weight. Henry watches her go, holding his breath until the door shuts behind her.

...He’d be lying if he said it was only to make sure she made it there safely. But then, he has always been skilled in the fine art of lying to himself.

Edward is a little surprised to find Henry and not Evie there waiting for him in the alleged second car when he arrives back at the train.

“Miss Frye was persuaded to rest only by a promise from me that I would wait up and tell her everything when I could,” Henry offers with a faint smile, nodding in the direction of the car that Edward knows at this point is where the twins sleep. “How goes it, Mister Kenway?”

“It could certainly be better,” Edward sighs, raising his burned hand for Henry to see. “Starrick’s house is warded against Kindred.”

He looks at his fingers. “It’s nothing some time and blood won’t fix, but...” He grimaces.

Henry matches it. “I was unaware that was possible. Someone would... have to know about Kindred to ward it against you...”

A look of mild horror is dawning on his face as he speaks.

“I seriously doubt they know about me in particular,” Edward says. “Given that Beckett didn’t even know, and he makes a point of shoving his nose in everywhere. But about Kindred in general... I doubt it was another Kindred, so it has to have been done by a mortal mage of some kind.”

“Ah, I see.” Henry nods his understanding. “That does remind me! There was some guesswork involved, given the difficulty of getting you fitted even discreetly, but I thought you might appreciate not having to wear centuries-old clothing or what Jacob and I could spare.”

He gestures toward the sofa, and a package sitting upon it.

Edward has to be a little careful about opening said package up, with his fingers in the state they’re in, but he’s presented with some clothes that look like they’ll fit decently enough. He raises his eyebrows in surprise, then turns back toward Henry.

“Thank you,” he says, hoping he doesn’t sound quite as thrown off as he feels.

Henry’s smile returns. “Of course.” He pauses for a moment, weighing his words, then adds, “I will confess, I wasn’t at all sure what to expect when we found you. But even the greatest legends were men once, and I’m glad to have met the man behind the legend.”

Edward blinks at Henry a few times, although it’s not something Kindred are technically required to do. It’s a little odd, realizing that he counts among legendary Assassins, these nights. He’s not sure he deserves it, given where he started. The mess he wound up leaving behind.

“I’m not sure you should be counting me as the legend, mate,” he says with a wry smile. “If you wanted an Assassin from my time to look to, I think Adéwalé might be the better choice.”

“We do,” Henry says. “It, ah... hasn’t come up what happened to him yet, has it?”

Edward sinks down onto the sofa, because Henry’s tone makes him think he’s going to want to be seated for whatever he’s about to hear. “...No, it hasn’t.”

“He was a legend, too, even while he was still alive,” Henry tells him. “An Assassin and a hero until the end of his days. Which is, of course, why the Templars wanted him gone.”

Henry sighs and goes on, more quietly, “A man who betrayed the Brotherhood killed him, though it is said he did not go easily. His killer was aided by your son. Sources... vary, on whether it was Cormac who killed him, if it was Haytham, or if he succumbed to his previous wounds before either reached him, but those I consider most reliable suggest the former.”

“...Ah,” Edward says quietly.

Knowing that Haytham had been twisted into a Templar is one thing. Knowing that his own son had a hand in the death of his best friend is... entirely another. His eyes burn, though Edward blinks away the bloody tears before they can fall.

“I am sorry,” Henry says. “...Dawn is soon, isn’t it?”

He’s not wrong. It is.

“Aye,” he agrees roughly. “That it is.”

There hadn’t been time to talk to Jacob before he took Attaway down. The lad was efficient, Edward will give him that. In the time between dawn and dusk, he’d reorganized a crew to steal back the engines they’d originally stolen for Attaway, and given that there’s not a word about those in the papers, Edward suspects that was a success.

Technically speaking, him killing Attaway was a success, too. That part’s not the issue. The issue is how, and that part’s the reason that Edward wishes he’d had the chance to speak with the lad sooner.

The killing itself went unnoticed. But the fact that her body was found in a train car in Waterloo Station, very clearly murdered, has sent the city into a tizzy.

Edward’s still not clear on what exactly an omnibus is, but there’s an awful lot of fuss about both companies for them in the city having lost their owners within two days in the newspaper’s evening edition.

He sighs, tucks away the paper, and stands from where he’d been perched on the roof of that station. For all Henry had said about not being able to get exact measurements, the new clothing fits him much better while still being easy to move in, something Edward knows from experience wasn’t all that simple a century ago and can’t have gotten more simple since then.

Edward hasn’t grown any more fond of trains. He has, however, noticed that they’re generally confined to rails that go to specific places, like other stations. Attaway was found dead only a few hours ago.

He finds Jacob unloading the last of the engines at a different station—Charing Cross—with several men and women wearing Rook colors, and speaking to another young man in a suit too quietly to easily be overheard.

A couple of the Rooks catch sight of him as he approaches. Edward takes a moment to be glad Henry had the foresight to put some of the exact shade of green the Rooks prefer into his new clothes as their hands fall away from their weapons.

“Evening, lads,” Edward says as he gets closer to Jacob and the other man that he doesn’t recognize.

The other man raises an eyebrow. “Another ‘business partner,’ Frye?”

His accent is wholly unfamiliar, but that’s probably something he can worry about later.

Jacob groans. “Don’t remind me. No, not in that sense.”

The man’s eyes, briefly, flick toward Jacob’s bracer, before going to Edward’s. Realization dawns on his face.

This really can’t wait any longer, so Edward clears his throat. “Mind if I borrow Frye here, Mister...?”

“Name’s Ned,” says the man, with a nod and in a tone like Edward should know that name.

Edward thanks his lucky stars for Henry Green, who had tucked a list of the Fryes’ main associates into the inner pocket of his new coat. Ned Wynert was on that list.

“Ah, right!” he says. “I do need to have a word with you, lad,” he adds, looking intently at Jacob.

“Sure,” Jacob says, waving Edward after him as he takes a couple steps away from Ned, then uses the rope launcher to pull himself up to the roof of a nearby building.

He asks, once Edward’s caught up with him, “Any luck with Starrick?”

“None. His house is warded against Kindred,” Edward says with a grimace. “But that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Jacob looks surprised. “What is it?”

Edward sighs. “I’m worried you haven’t been thinking through the consequences of your actions,” he says, deciding to cut straight to the chase. “The targets need to die, aye, but the way they’re dying is throwing the rest of London into chaos.”

“Did Evie send you to say that?” Jacob asks. “If it’s to be a lecture, she can do that herself.”

“She has nothing to do with this,” Edward says.

“...Right.” Jacob glances down, then back up at him. “Didn’t expect that.”

“I told you that you reminded me of myself when I was your age, yeah?” Edward says, leaning back a bit. “I don’t want to watch you make the same mistakes I did.”

Very slowly, Jacob nods.

“What would you have done differently?” he asks, after a long moment.

Edward mulls the question over.

“Tried to make it look like an accident, most likely,” he settles on. “Not an obvious murder. Probably would’ve hid the bodies, too.”

After a long moment, Jacob nods again. “I’ll remember that.”

“Good,” Edward says.

Interrupting Crawford Starrick is a perilous endeavor at the best of times. Given that one of his men lies dead on the ground of his office with a gunshot wound to the heart, it seems safe to assume that he’s learned of his cousin’s death from someone with less tact than Lucy would have had.

She waits for him to finish playing, regardless.

As the final notes fade, she steps forward. “Crawford,” she says, before pausing over her word choice.

“Her luster stripped by the hands of that savage,” he says, voice hollow. “He must be brought to justice.”

“Pearl would not want justice,” Lucy argues. “Pearl would want vengeance!”

“Your passion is most welcome, Miss Thorne,” Crawford says quietly. He takes a breath and squares his shoulders. “But we cannot let our emotions disrupt the lawful structures of society. If we do that, the enemy wins.”

“It shall happen in the shadows,” Lucy promises. “With Miss Frye injured, the Assassins already stretch themselves too thin to compensate, and she is obviously the mind behind their operation.”

With that said, literally speaking, it may need to happen outside of the shadows for it to happen at all, given growing suspicions on her part.

“Her brother will face justice,” she goes on. “I’ll see to it personally.”

Crawford sighs, and nods. “I suppose it must be done,” he says. He holds her gaze intently. “Take no chances. Increase the Templar presence in London. We alone protect this city of light.”

“Yes, Crawford,” Lucy agrees. “And then we shall enter the vault and cast aside the shadows together.”

That day cannot come soon enough.

Chapter Text

Lambeth joins Whitechapel in being freed from Templar influence—insomuch as any one of London’s boroughs can be, when Starrick remains the power behind the city as a whole—with the assassination of the last prominent Templars in the area and the Rooks moving in to take over for the Blighters. Southwark is nearly to the same when Evie is finally recovered enough, physically, to think about returning to active duty.

(How much she has recovered from that incident emotionally may be a different story, but Evie Frye has never let that stop her before and has no intention of allowing anything of the sort to stop her now.)

More importantly, Southwark’s all but freed without anything so important as modern medicine or the London transportation network being collateral damage. All that’s left now is for the Templar overseeing Southwark to accept the challenge from the Rooks.

...And for her brother to turn up from wherever he’d gotten off to. Evie’s not too worried, personally. He’s never missed an opportunity to lead his gang (the name of which, Evie still wishes he’d picked anything else, but it’s far too late to change now) into battle before.

The messenger turns up before he does, accepting the Rooks’ challenge, their terms, and the time (after dark, both to avoid the attention of the authorities and—less officially—because they’ve all become a little more nocturnal lately since meeting Edward) on Octavia Plumb’s behalf.

Evie is beginning to worry, though, when night falls and the most nocturnal Assassin of their group arrives on the scene—and Jacob is still nowhere to be found.

“Where’s Jacob?” Edward asks as he takes a look around at their group.

“We’ve not seen him,” Henry says worriedly.

“...You haven’t either,” Evie reasons, which makes this significantly more concerning. “The gang war is nigh, and we cannot risk postponing it or Plumb will go to ground. Where is he?”

She isn’t particularly looking forward to leading the gang into battle, it’s Jacob’s gang after all, but she’s capable of it if she must. Which it is looking increasingly likely that she will have to.

Edward gets a worried look on his face. “I’m not sure you should be in the thick of a gang war, lass,” he says, before turning to Henry. “D’you have something I could write with?”

“Someone must,” Evie protests, as Henry nods and produces both a pen and a sheet of paper from... wherever he’d been keeping them on his person. “I want to trust that Jacob will be. But, supposing he isn’t...”

The other options are Henry (who Evie rather doubts is quite as inept in combat as he routinely claims, but a gang war is not the time to test that) or Edward (who might very well attract too much of the wrong kind of attention simply by virtue of what he is, and who is generally better-suited to the shadows). Evie herself is the best option, as little as she likes it.

“I’ll handle the fight itself,” Edward says as he scrawls something down.

It’s a little surreal, watching the handwriting she’d seen in a journal well over a century old appear right in front of her eyes.

“You’d better go look for your brother. I... hope this won’t be necessary,” he says, blowing on the ink for a moment before folding the note. “But... I’ve a bad hunch that it will be.”

He clears his throat, then scrawls something else, clearly an address, on the outside of the note. “You remember that old friend of mine I mentioned? He should be at this address.” He taps it, and holds the note out to Evie. “Take him this, and tell him I sent you.”

Hesitantly, Evie takes the note, scanning the address quickly. That looks to be in Whitechapel, and she won’t deny she is very curious about Edward’s friend, but...

“What of the Masquerade?” Evie asks.

“That alone is part of why he ought to take you seriously.” Edward sighs. “Besides, sometimes we are required to act through agents who can operate when we’re not able to.” His gaze flicks upward meaningfully to the moon overhead. “We’ll talk more about that later, aye?”

Understanding his meaning, Evie nods.

“I’ll... double back to the train,” Henry decides. “Someone should be there in case your brother does return, and I wouldn’t be of much use in the fight.”

“Keep an eye out,” Edward says, nodding to him.

The journey back to the train hideout is an uneventful one, thankfully. There is no obvious sign of Jacob Frye when Henry arrives, and a trip up to the engine to speak with Agnes confirms that she hasn’t seen or heard from him either. At least, not since anyone else had.

Henry sighs, and thanks her regardless, and retraces his steps to the carriage that most of the planning occurs in. Should Jacob return on his own, he’ll come here first.

And should he not... at the very least, it’s a comfort to know that Evie Frye won’t be attempting to lead a gang war without her brother.

It isn’t long before Edward finds the right place, and not a moment too soon for the right time. Damn good thing it is that the Rooks have gotten relatively used to him in the past few weeks, or else getting them to follow him instead of Jacob or Evie would be... harder.

Not impossible, mind. But much harder, especially when he’s already got to pull his punches.

“Alright, lads!” he calls out. “Let’s show the Blighters who’s in charge around here, aye?”

It’s not quite the same as leading the crew of the Jackdaw had been. But it’s a good deal more familiar than he thought it’d be, even if they’re well away from the sea.

(He hasn’t seen the ocean in well over a century. The thought’s not a pleasant one, but he shoves it down. He’s got a battle to win, and while the rules might have changed, the aims haven’t at all.)

Evie is... quite honestly, not at all sure what to expect, apart from ‘another Kindred’ and presumably one Edward trusts. But if something truly has happened to Jacob—and something must have, because even he wouldn’t miss something he’d worked hard to set up—then there is no time to waste.

She takes a deep breath, steeling herself, and then knocks on the door.

The door is opened, before long, by a black-haired man who, despite being indoors, is wearing dark glasses. He arches an eyebrow when he sees Evie standing there.

“Well, I can’t say this is what I expected to see when I opened my door,” he says in a tone that makes every word out of his mouth sound remarkably sarcastic. “Can I help you?”

Evie produces the note. “Edward sent me, and this. I... trust you know which Edward I mean?”

The second eyebrow rises to join the first, and the man accepts the note.

“I imagine I do,” he says.

He lifts the dark glasses for a moment to scan the contents of the note, giving Evie the opportunity to see why he’s wearing them in the first place: his eyes glow like burning embers in a fire. That would certainly make it difficult to blend in with humanity as a whole. Glowing eyes are rather uncommon, putting it lightly—and the fact that his do, yet Edward’s don’t, is interesting.

She doesn’t know how much questioning Edward’s friend will entertain, though, so she says nothing to that effect.

Instead she says, “My name is Evie Frye. You must be Beckett?”

Beckett slips his glasses back into place before nodding.

“I am,” he says. “You must be one of the ones causing problems for the Templars these nights.”

Evie nods. “As is my brother. Who has been entirely missing since... this morning.”

“Ah,” Beckett says. “Jacob, I assume?” He pockets the note.

“Yes.” Evie is, perhaps, more worried about him than she previously realized. “Can you find him?”

“I will do what I can,” Beckett says. “Where did you see him last, this morning?”

It feels like a safe enough assumption to assume that more detail will be better here, so she describes how the day started as best as she can. Jacob had delivered their message for Octavia Plumb, something that must have happened successfully or else there would have been a very different reply, and also something that should have been over and done with fairly quickly.

“It’s... possible,” Evie finishes tentatively, “that he might still be in Southwark somewhere.”

But the borough isn’t a small one. None of them are, really—though perhaps especially not to someone born and raised in Crawley.

“Then that is where we will begin,” Beckett says. “Edward rather doubts that it is just mortal trouble your brother has gotten himself into,” he adds in an undertone as they begin to walk, “but it may be best to start near the police all the same.”

“Are Kindred not entirely limited to the night, then?” Evie asks at a similar volume.

“We are, unless we act through intermediaries,” Beckett says. “But Kindred are not the only ones capable of... interference.”

True. Edward mentioned quite a few other supernatural beings that Evie had really and truly thought to be only the domain of myth until meeting him.

“Did he tell you,” Evie asks, “that there was a ward against Kindred protecting the home of the most prominent Templar in this city?”

“...That explains the urgency of his note,” Beckett says, which does answer Evie’s question.

Unsurprisingly, the constables in Southwark are few and far between, given the main event of tonight and the fact that the majority of the police would rather let the city’s gangs pick off each other than attempt an intervention. Disappointingly, the first few they find have nothing useful to say.

And then one of them says to his partner, “Didn’t Smith mention a bloke like that? ...Or was it Wilson?”

“I don’t suppose you could tell us where we could find either of those gentlemen?” Beckett asks, raising his eyebrows.

“It would be very helpful,” Evie adds with a politer smile than she feels like giving these men.

“Well, we’re not supposed to tell that to civilians,” the partner says dubiously. “Think it was Smith, though.”

“No, I remember now, it was Wilson!” the first constable argues.

“Perhaps we ought to speak to them both, just to be sure,” says Beckett.

“...Yeah, alright, so long as you come back and let us know which it was,” the partner says. “Wilson’s on duty in Whitechapel tonight, and Smith in Lambeth.”

Evie’s smile grows significantly more forced. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to let us know what either of these men look like?”

The constables are, at least, cooperative enough for that. Beckett scrawls the descriptions down, and they head on their way, with precisely no intention of actually returning once they determine whether it was Smith or Wilson who saw her brother.

“Which would you prefer to check first?” he asks.

“Lambeth is closer,” Evie replies without hesitation.

“Lambeth it is, then.”

Ultimately, Lambeth does turn out to be the right call. Constable Smith immediately recognizes the description of Jacob, which is a good sign.

What is a considerably less good sign is when Smith’s immediate response is to say, “Don’t you worry none, lass, he’ll face justice soon enough.”

“Justice for what, precisely?” Beckett asks.

“You haven’t heard?” Smith looks shocked. “Thought that must’ve been why you were asking. He’s the one in all the papers, the one who murdered Pearl Attaway!”

...Jacob did do that, yes. He’d also said he wasn’t caught doing it.

“Your coworkers couldn’t recall if it was you or Wilson who did catch him, and asked us to verify,” Evie says, significantly more stiffly than her previous line of questioning. “That must have been... difficult.”

Smith snorts, and shakes his head, which manages to somehow make even less sense.

Beckett raises an eyebrow. “Catching a murderer was easy?”

“Lad must’ve been at the drink,” Smith says. “Collapsed right in front of Davies and I, damned bastard was still out cold by the time we got him to the Yard. But do we get any kind of reward for bringing in a murderer? Course we don’t, we get sent to bloody Lambeth instead.”

Smith certainly continues his tirade against his superiors for not rewarding his hard work, but Evie finds herself paying little attention to it now. She knows what she needs to.

(And it is seeming significantly more likely now that Edward was right. For all her brother’s flaws, this isn’t remotely normal for him—or for anyone.)

“Thank you for your time,” Beckett says. “We’d best be on our way.”

“Yeah, course—who sent you, again?”

“We didn’t catch their names,” Evie says, truthfully. And then she turns and leaves before she can say anything else that would, in all likelihood, make her seem infinitely more suspicious to the constable that arrested her brother for murder.

“Good evening,” Beckett says before following after her.

He waits until they’re out of earshot to murmur, “To Scotland Yard, then, I presume.”

Evie nods. “This isn’t like him. Even if he was drinking—”

Which he typically doesn’t, during the day, Evie would like to think she still knows her brother well enough for that.

“—he knows his limits. Regardless, they shouldn’t have been able to connect him to Attaway so easily.”

“No, they shouldn’t have,” Beckett agrees. “Something else is at work here. Likely whatever mage warded Starrick’s home.”

She was afraid of that, but she won’t be admitting as such to someone she barely knows.

Instead, she says, “Our people have no presence in the Strand yet, so we will both need to be very cautious. In all likelihood, that may have factored into why they chose now to strike.”

“If you’re able to keep the police distracted, I should be able to sneak in and free your brother. Mortals rarely suspect a cloud of mist to be capable of much.”

Evie raises an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have before you said that.”

Beckett smirks. “And we shall use that to our advantage.”

She nods. “Then I will provide the distraction and await your signal to rejoin you.”

“Excellent. Shall we?”

“We shall,” Evie agrees.

Admittedly, even with Beckett mentioning that he could sneak in as a cloud of mist, it is still quite the surprise to see Edward’s friend there one moment and nothing but mist in the next.

(The gang war is likely nearing its end by now, but Evie can worry about that if it becomes a problem later.)

She has a distraction to cause. It has, admittedly, been some time. But certainly not long enough that she’s forgotten how to.

Jacob Frye has... absolutely no idea how he got here, to tell the truth. He’s got a decent enough idea of where here is, at this point—Scotland Yard—and why he’s here, given all the glares and mutters about poor late murdered Pearl Attaway.

But how? That’s... not lining up. He’s got nothing but time to try and puzzle it out, though, while he’s waiting for an opportunity to get himself out of the cell they’d thrown him in.

It’s late enough now that he’s mostly being ignored by guards who would rather be at home in bed, though. If he looks out the barred windows, he can just about make out a sliver of moonlight, when clouds aren’t blocking the view.

Given that he last remembers it being morning, that’s... not great, to put it mildly. He sighs, and stands to begin pacing back and forth in his cell. He thinks his head would hurt more if someone knocked him upside it, but he genuinely can’t think of anything else it could have been.

Still, whoever got him in here’ll turn up to gloat at some point. And when they do, that’ll be his big moment.

(It would have been nice if they’d bothered to turn up earlier, though. He should be in Southwark right now.)

Movement outside the cell catches his eye, but when he turns, there’s nothing there.

Wait, no, there’s a cloud of mist. Which is odd, because he’s indoors.

Jacob thinks he’s rather justified for the startled yelp he lets out when that mist changes into a person.

“Hello to you too,” the person says, sounding amused. “I’m a friend of Edward’s. Are you alright?”

Jacob’s mouth works soundlessly for several moments before he manages any words at all.

“Well, now I’m even more confused,” he says.

“There’ll be time for that later,” says the person who was previously a cloud of mist, holding up a ring of keys. “I assume you’d rather not stay here to find out what the authorities have planned for you?”

“...Yeah,” Jacob says slowly. “You’d be right about that.”

Edward has some fucking explaining to do when they meet up again, though.

Sneaking out of Scotland Yard, at least, goes easily enough—especially once Jacob gets his gear back. Whoever Edward’s friend is, he’s capable enough of keeping up with Jacob, if a slower climber.

That said, Jacob can’t say he’s particularly expecting to pull himself onto the roof of the building to the sight of his sister...

“What is she doing?” he whispers to Edward’s friend.

“Providing a distraction,” comes the reply.

“Christ,” Jacob mutters, morbidly impressed. “Didn’t know she had it in her.”

It’s more of a relief than Evie cares to admit when her brother doesn’t look much the worse for wear, merely immensely confused and staring at Beckett in much the same way that Henry was staring at Edward for the first week or so of their acquaintance.

“Mister Beckett, thank you,” she says with a respectful nod. “Jacob—what happened?”

“I wish I knew,” he says, shrugging helplessly. “I delivered the message for the gang war, and then...” Jacob trails off, shrugs again, and says, “Woke up in jail for killing Pearl Attaway. But no one saw me do it, I swear.”

That is a relief to hear. Jacob would know, she thinks, if his exit had been noticed.

...But considering what Edward and Beckett told her, especially, it’s more of a relief to see him standing here unharmed. And so Evie steps forward and pulls her brother into a tight embrace.

He goes still as a statue for a moment, before cautiously bringing his arms up and patting her on the back.

She pulls away quickly, clears her throat, and says, “We should return to the train. Mister Beckett, would you care to join us? There are certain things that shouldn’t be discussed in public, and I expect that our mutual friend has likely finished with his business tonight by now.”

“I suppose that would be for the best,” Beckett says with a nod.

Edward would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy himself while leading the Rooks to victory, and making sure to temper his actual strength to normal human levels was a damn good distraction from the reason why he was doing it. But Octavia Plumb (what a name) is dead, the Rooks are firmly in control of Southwark, and by the time Edward’s excused himself from several victory celebrations and made it back onto the damn train, Henry remains the only Assassin there.

“Ah, Mister Kenway!” Henry says. “How did it go?”

“Southwark belongs to the Rooks now,” he reports, managing a brief grin. “I take it the others aren’t back yet?” he asks, grin fading.

Henry shakes his head. “Not yet.”

It’s at that moment, of course, that a bat flies into the carriage. A bat that pauses in midair, then looks to Edward and cocks its head a little to one side as if to ask, well?

Edward doesn’t bother to suppress the urge to roll his eyes. “Yes, alright, you smug bastard,” he says, unable to keep the fond exasperation from his voice.

“What...” Henry begins, before Beckett begins to change back, at which point the pen he had been holding falls from his fingers and he makes no move to pick it up in favor of staring.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you doing that,” Edward comments as Jacob and Evie make their way into the train car.

“Doing what?” Jacob asks.

“That bat,” Henry says, “turned into a man.”

“Well, it isn’t much stranger than transforming into a cloud of mist,” Evie says, to a considerably more confused look from Henry.

“Oh, Gangrel learn how to transform into animals well before mist,” Beckett says, smirking.

“I doubt that was the point, mate,” says Edward.

“It was not,” Evie agrees. “But never mind that. Mister Kenway, how did it go with Southwark?”

“Well, I think,” Edward says. “The Blighters no longer have a hold there.”

Evie turns to her brother. “There, see? Nothing to worry about.”

“I still would’ve liked to have been there,” Jacob mutters.

“On that note,” she turns back to Edward, “what we know is that he collapsed directly in front of a pair of constables, who were able to identify him as Attaway’s murderer despite the fact that no one saw him kill her, and has been locked up in Scotland Yard since shortly after he delivered our challenge to the Templar overseeing Southwark. This morning.”

Edward frowns. “Sounds like my hunch was right, then,” he says, crossing his arms. “That sounds like magic.”

“That, and Templars,” Henry comments. “Only they—and us—know the truth of who exactly was responsible for her death. Someone must have tipped them off.”

“Possibly the same someone,” Evie says thoughtfully.

“Most likely,” Edward sighs. “We know the Templars have got some sort of magic user involved, given the wards on Starrick’s place.”

“Does the name... Eveline Dipper,” Beckett says, “mean anything to any of you?”

He isn’t actually looking at any of them, but at some papers he’s produced from his bag.

“Yes,” Henry says suddenly, “it does. Relatively low-ranking, but known for being able to charm others into giving her... anything she wants, regardless of whether they wish to part with it. You don’t think...”

“Well,” Beckett says mildly, “I took the liberty of securing the evidence they had against Mister Frye. It seems Miss Dipper has come forward to claim she saw him do the deed.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jacob protests. “No one saw me, I made sure of it!”

“She could have lied,” Beckett says, holding the topmost of the papers out for Jacob to see for himself. “Does any of this seem familiar?”

Jacob takes the paper and skims through it, lips moving silently as he reads. “Only the part where she was dead of a stab wound in the last car,” he says as he looks up. “The rest of it’s bullshit.”

Evie breathes a sigh of relief. “Regardless, we should investigate Miss Dipper further—assassinating her might be easier said than done, if she’s capable of all this.”

“She’s still mortal,” Edward points out. “Mortals tend not to survive knives shoved through their throats.”

“True,” Evie allows. “Best not to let her see us coming, then. I’ll handle her myself.”

Edward isn’t certain that’s the best idea, but he doesn’t want to undermine her in front of everyone else either. “If you’re sure, lass.”

“...I’m sure,” Evie says.

The look in her eyes reminds him of the one he’d seen, only briefly before it gave way to shame, when she climbed into the hidden room within St. Paul’s Cathedral after him.

“Right then,” Edward replies. “So what’s the plan, going forward?”

“Business as usual,” Evie says briskly, “but we prioritize... was Miss Dipper on the list of Templars in the City proper?”

Henry nods.

“Then that borough is next,” she goes on, “but we will need to be careful. Jacob, please do attempt not to destroy modern medicine or the London transportation network?”

Jacob scoffs. “It’ll be fine,” he says, waving a hand.

The look Evie gives him in response to that is best described as dubious, but she leaves the matter there.

Chapter Text

Eveline Dipper doesn’t look like much, but looks—Evie knows very well—can be deceiving. She has no visible weapons on her, but she’s rather boldly wearing a Templar cross on one shoulder. She is also actively coercing a passerby to part with their grandfather’s watch by offering something prettier and more useful in trade from her stall when Evie arrives on the scene. Her customer doesn’t seem thrilled about the prospect of parting with it, but as Evie watches from above, the man does eventually come around to Dipper’s line of reasoning and leaves with a watch that is, at the very least, more functional.

(...For now. Given how Templars are, and how the market stall in question looks to be able to be packed up and moved at a moment’s notice, Evie has certain suspicions that Dipper isn’t telling her would-be customers everything.)

Whatever else this woman is capable of, though, she is mortal—and most everyone tends to be disoriented by a smoke bomb from above. Evie lets one fall, then drops down behind her, creeps forward, and slits her throat.

The world fades away around them, something anticipated if never quite familiar—but something that will allow Evie a brief chance to speak with her.

And so she says to the dying woman, “Your plan was clever, but it never could have succeeded for long—especially not once we knew who you were. Surely you must have known that?”

“W-what are you talking about?” she stammers, eyes wide with fear and confusion.

Evie raises an eyebrow. “Is now truly the time to play dumb?”

Except... she doesn’t seem like she is lying.

“I—I didn’t do anything to you,” Dipper insists.

“You didn’t provide an eyewitness report—” Granted, a largely inaccurate one by Jacob’s telling. “—of Pearl Attaway’s murder?”

Dipper shakes her head vehemently. “No! I didn’t—I didn’t even know she was dead... until the papers.”

“...Then someone else did so under your name,” Evie realizes. “Of course it wouldn’t be so simple.”

And whoever did give Dipper’s name in lieu of their own will certainly be watching for her to be killed. The plan was cleverer than Evie gave its mastermind credit for, and she has played directly into their hands.

“I don’t understand,” Dipper whimpers.

It is, unfortunately for her, rather late for explanations. Evie would feel more guilt, except she is still a Templar.

Dipper dies. Evie kneels, wiping some of the blood from her throat onto a handkerchief. And then, as the streets of London fade back into sharp focus around her, she takes her leave, all the while puzzling over one question.

If Dipper wasn’t the one behind what happened to Jacob... then who was?

“It wasn’t Dipper,” is not the worst way that Edward has been greeted upon reaching that blasted train for the first time tonight, but it’s got to be up there.

Evie pauses, and then says, slightly belatedly, “Good evening.”

“Evening,” Edward says absently, as he tries to process that other revelation. “You’re sure?” he asks after a moment.

“She swore it on her deathbed,” Evie says, “and seemed much too shaken to take a lie to her grave. I’m as sure as I can be.”

“Well, shit.” Edward rubs a hand over his face with a groan. “Guess I’ll have to do some mingling with the local Kindred, then.”

“Could Kindred...” Evie pauses, clearly thinking about it. “You mentioned mortal mages—do immortal mages exist?”

“They do and they’re right bastards,” Edward says. “Bloody Tremere are so high and mighty about their Thaumaturgy.”

Evie nods. “Would they be the type to work with Templars?”

“I... seriously doubt it,” he has to admit. “They’re part of the Camarilla. And the Camarilla is very insistent about the Masquerade.”

“...Ah.” Evie sounds disappointed. “Never mind, then.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Did you want to have Kindred helping the Templars?”

The horrified look she gives him definitely answers that question, but it’s a little funny to see just how quickly she backtracks. “Absolutely not. I simply... thought I might have been onto something.”

“We’ll figure it out, lass,” Edward says. “Just may take a bit.”

“Right.” She clears her throat. “You just missed Jacob, I’m afraid. He’s off looking for Starrick’s banker—look what Mister Green found.”

The letter he’s handed is from a “Plutus” to a “Boiler” about a meddling man calling himself “Dredge” asking too many questions about Templar plans. They’re all fake names, he’s sure.

Edward hums thoughtfully. “Well, cutting off Starrick’s access to funding isn’t a bad idea.”

“Yes, and foiling whatever that plan may be would be a bonus,” Evie says before hesitating. And then she goes on, “I know that the key to the Shroud is useless without its location, and I know that we would know very well if that location had been breached by the Templars. I... fully understand that you will not trust me with that location, but I do not want all this to be for nothing because of my impatience.”

He sighs heavily and considers her. Without the key, it isn’t as if the Assassins that he still isn’t entirely sure he trusts with the damn thing will be able to get to it anyway. (And better them than the Templars.)

“It’s in the Tower of London,” Edward says tiredly.

Slowly, and with unmistakable surprise written all over her face, Evie nods.

“Anyone would find difficulty infiltrating there on short notice,” she says thoughtfully. “And it would not surprise me if Mister Green knows someone close enough to watch for heightened Templar activity. I have learned very well not to underestimate his information network in this city.”

Though the man himself tends to, Edward recalls.

Rather than commenting on that, he says, “They do have a predilection for not being robbed.” It’s why he’d chosen it as the Shroud’s hiding place in the first place. “Even the Templars can’t get around that easily.”

“True. And most would assume, if the Tower was being targeted, that it would be for the crown jewels before anything else.”

Edward nods. “Precisely.”

“...If you happen to see Mister Green before I do,” Evie says, “would you be willing to pass that along? There are no less than three factories Miss O’Dea has directed us to in this borough and I’m hoping to free the children from at least one of them tonight.”

“I will,” Edward agrees, seeing as the cat is thoroughly out of the bag now anyway.

“Thank you,” Evie says briskly, and makes for the rear of the car, shutting that door gingerly behind her.

Through the window, Edward can make out the way her face twists into a grimace as she stretches. But she’s out of sight—and in all likelihood off the train—before he can decide what, if anything, to do about that.

“Miss Frye!”

“You just missed her, lad,” comes the response from someone who is decidedly not named Frye, but Henry had thought he might be early enough to catch her before she left for the evening, especially given that she surely can’t be entirely recovered from her injury yet.

...Ah well.

“It can wait,” Henry decides, with some reluctance.

Edward tilts his head. “What is it?” he asks.

“Miss Thorne was sighted leaving the...” He is speaking with Edward Kenway currently, isn’t he. “Your former residence, earlier today. She hasn’t returned in the hours since, so it seems safe to assume that she has either given up or found what she was searching for.”

Edward’s face twists in clear displeasure. “She doesn’t strike me as the sort to give up easily,” he mutters.

“...No. She isn’t,” Henry agrees. “But if she has taken something, it will not be any less taken for waiting a little longer, and by the time I was alerted to her presence she was already long gone.”

“I suppose it won’t, no.” Edward sighs and rubs a hand over his face, and Henry can almost see the other man’s exhaustion like a physical presence draped around his shoulders. “She’s likely to try and find a way into the Tower of London, then.”

His meaning is fairly clear, given what they all know for a fact Lucy Thorne is also actively searching for. The very reason that the Templars had gone searching through the Kenway Mansion to begin with—and, consequently, how Edward Kenway is standing here now.

“That is where you hid the Shroud,” Henry reasons. He can feel his eyebrows creeping higher. “Why tell me and not Miss Frye?”

“I did, earlier tonight,” Edward replies.

“...Ah,” Henry says. “I understand now.”

“She’s taking care of one of the factories tonight for Clara O’Dea,” Edward says. “But she mentioned that your information network might have someone able to keep watch for Templar activity in the Tower.”

Henry nods without hesitation. “One of the guardsmen is a friend.”

“Good,” Edward replies.

“...Though,” Henry admits, “the name Frye might go further than my own with him. He was an ally of the twins’ father long before we met.”

“I haven’t heard much about him,” Edward says. “Did you ever meet the man?”

“Yes.”

There is so much that Henry could say about him, and he isn’t the right person to say any of it. Nor does it feel like the right time, so soon after his death.

“His name was Ethan Frye,” he goes on, eventually, much more hesitantly. “He mentored me for a time, though I heard little of his children until after his passing.”

He pauses. Then meets Edward’s eyes. And says, very evenly, “I owe him my life.”

“That sounds like a story,” Edward replies, raising his eyebrows.

“Less of one than you would believe,” he says. “I failed my first mission for the Brotherhood. I should have been put to death. Because of him, I was exiled instead. To England.”

Edward narrows his eyes. “Last I checked, simple failure isn’t cause for execution in the Brotherhood.”

“It was far from a simple failure.” He looks down. “I compromised the Brotherhood. I broke the Creed. And so the man I was is dead.”

“Should Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad have been put to death?” Edward asks in a tone that doesn’t quite manage to be idle. “He did the same, deliberately, in his time.”

“It was a different time,” he replies. “He didn’t fail because he hesitated.”

“If you’re trying to convince me you’re not worthy to be an Assassin, you may as well save your breath, mate.”

His breath catches in his throat.

“...I have failed too many times, when it mattered most,” Henry says quietly, “to trust my own assessment of that. I leave the heroics to people like Miss Frye.”

“You stayed alive as the only Assassin in Templar-controlled London for... how many years?” Edward asks. “That doesn’t sound like failure to me.”

“...Soon to be nine years,” he admits.

“I doubt either of the twins would have managed half as long, with how reckless they both are.”

It’s certainly for the best that neither of the twins are present at the moment, because he couldn’t hold back a quiet chuckle if he tried.

“Perhaps not. Though I was rarely the only Assassin in London. Merely... the only one in permanent residence. Their father visited before his illness.”

Edward raises an eyebrow. “And yet it took his children arriving here, without permission, after his death, for any strikes to be made against the Templars.”

The former pirate sounds... decidedly unimpressed with the Council, when he puts it like that.

“I have heard it said that their parents came the closest to truly challenging Starrick,” he says hurriedly. “That was... before my time. I know that their mother died when they were born.”

“Ah,” says Edward, comprehension dawning on his face. “I see.”

“He was... uninvolved with their early childhood,” he goes on, “because he was in India. Training me. We had our differences. But I would have liked to speak with him once more, before... I did not know of his illness until he had already passed.”

“Why him, and not one of the Assassins closer to you?”

“Our parents were close friends.” He sighs. “Less close, I suspect, after my failure. We have spoken little since.”

Whatever Edward is thinking, it’s impossible to read on his face. “What did happen?” he asks.

He closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to see how Edward reacts to this. “I was to assassinate a Templar. It should have been simple. He was asleep. I couldn’t do it. I... my own father had to save me from being strangled with my own weapon.”

He expects to hear the weight of displeasure in Edward’s voice. Disappointment.

“Not everyone’s meant to be a killer, lad. The world would be a much worse place than it already is if they were.”

Edward doesn’t sound disappointed, nor displeased. He can’t picture what the look on his face might be.

“My parents, and the rest of the Indian Brotherhood, had no place for someone who wasn’t,” he says quietly. “I’m fortunate another Brotherhood did.”

“That’s their mistake,” Edward says firmly.

“Is it,” he says weakly. But Edward, he discovers, looks as serious as the grave he never occupied.

“Aye, it is,” Edward replies.

Jayadeep Mir—he hasn’t thought of himself by that name, not truly, for years—breathes out slowly.

And he says, in the levelest tone he can manage, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The evening following Phillip Twopenny’s murder, Edward greets Jacob with the late edition of the newspaper in his hand.

“This counts as thinking through the consequences of your actions?” he asks, gesturing to the headline.

Jacob winces. “I didn’t think they’d find him so quickly...”

Edward closes his eyes, reminds himself that he ought to be patient with the lad, and opens them again.

“Why did you kill him in the vault?” he asks. Maybe, if he can get an idea of what Jacob’s reasoning was, he’ll be slightly less inclined to shake him by the shoulders until his teeth rattle. Maybe.

“He was robbing the place,” Jacob says. “I thought, if they don’t open it that often, I could leave the body in there until all the fuss died down.”

Edward pinches the bridge of his nose. “I take it the fact that they were going to be investigating the vault, because he was robbing it, did not occur to you.”

“...Oh,” Jacob says.

So, no. It didn’t occur to him at all.

The urge to shake Jacob rises, and Edward folds his hands behind his back before he can give into it. “This is the sort of thing I was talking about, lad.”

“I was careful before that,” he says defensively. “Wouldn’t it have been worse if he’d actually robbed the place?”

“That’s where timing would’ve come into play,” Edward says. “If he didn’t have time to get what he stole back to wherever he was going to stash it, the coppers would’ve brought it straight back.”

“But that still would’ve caused a scene!” That last bit sounds suspiciously like he’s quoting someone else, and none too happy about it.

“Not a scene that damn near collapsed the economy in a single day, if the papers are anything to go by.”

“It what,” Jacob says, sounding dangerously near impressed. “Really?”

Edward gives him a flat look. “Yes, and the amount of damage it’s already caused is... astonishing.”

Jacob scowls. “Now you’re sounding like Evie.”

“What else do you expect me to say, lad?” Edward shakes his head. “You’ve seen how much the poor in this city already suffer, and it’s only getting worse, now.”

He watches Jacob breathe in sharply. And then he explodes.

“Well, it’s not like I’m good for a damn thing except causing chaos, am I?” Jacob bursts out. “If you want a... a perfect little Assassin, hell, you don’t need me! And I don’t need you, either—you’re not my father, though I’m sure you would’ve gotten on swell with the man!”

He says father in approximately the same tone a younger and stupider Edward would have used for navy, or government, or Roberts.

Jacob tips his hat mockingly, mutters the words “Can’t believe I ever thought you’d understand,” and zips off to the nearest rooftop without looking back.

Edward watches him go, and makes no effort to follow, even as his chest aches. Trying to continue this conversation right now, when Jacob is clearly hurt and angry, won’t get them anywhere.

He runs a hand through his hair, sighs, and tips his head back to stare up at the night sky, wondering how he’s going to make this right.

Eventually—he couldn’t say how long—there’s footsteps nearby, which he ignores. Someone clears their throat, which he also ignores, until that same someone or someone else from the same direction says, “Oi! You’re... Edward, yeah?”

Then, he bothers to turn and look. The man standing there’s clad in Rook green, but that’s the only thing that’s familiar about him at a glance.

“Yeah,” Edward says, shrugging. “What of it?”

“My mates said you were real good in a fight back in Southwark,” the man says, nodding to the aforementioned mates, who are also in Rook green. “We’ve got... a bit of a situation here, don’t want to bother Jacob or his sister with it—”

“His sister’s a little scary, actually,” one of the mates says.

“Yeah, well, so is he. This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, if you’re game. If you’re not...”

“You seen Jacob anywhere?” the other mate asks hopefully.

...Something about this feels off, but Edward can’t put his finger on what. So he shrugs. “He went off with the rope launcher a little bit ago, so I doubt you lads would catch him. What’s the situation?”

Jacob’s still pissed, to put it lightly, by the time he finds the highest spot in the area he can reasonably reach and that no one will take issue with him loitering in (admittedly an easier feat in London by night than it would be during the day) and crouches there like some kind of gargoyle, glaring out at the darkness until he’s less angry.

The more he thinks back on what he’d said—what Edward had said, too—and on how things went at the damn bank... it all went to shit there at the end, he knows that. He knew that. And he’d looked for somewhere better to hide Twopenny’s body, he just... hadn’t had time. Probably wouldn’t have had time from the moment he stabbed the bastard.

...The more he thinks about it, the more he starts to have the frankly horrifying realization that Edward had a point, after all. That yes, it would have been smarter to nab him after he’d left the bank, and yes, this might not be ‘destroying modern medicine’ (he hadn’t thought the fallout of Elliotson’s murder was that bad) but it’s probably similarly bad for the average Londoner for Edward to have reacted like that—and even if he was overreacting, comparing him to his father was a step too far.

(Not that Edward would know that, he’d never met the man—and not that Jacob genuinely thinks they would’ve gotten on. Knowing that there’s not a chance in hell of Edward knowing how he’d meant that to hurt, funnily enough, doesn’t make Jacob feel much better.)

Jacob glares into the darkness for a while longer, just for good measure. And then he groans and begins to climb down.

Feeling a little bit like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs, Jacob heads back to where he’d last seen Edward. He’s probably not there anymore, but it’s a good place to start looking for the man. Jacob’s not the best at apologies, not by a long shot. But he owes Edward one for blowing up the way he did, he thinks.

To his immense surprise, Edward is almost exactly where he was when he stormed off. And also talking to a trio of Rooks about something, which is somehow a bigger surprise than that—the Rooks know that he’s an ally, and he’s still been hearing about Southwark, but that doesn’t make them seek him out any more than they seek out Evie.

(...Ugh, if Edward knows, Evie definitely knows, but Jacob really doesn’t need to hear one of his father’s lectures coming out of his sister’s mouth right now. Or ever, ideally, but he’ll take putting the damn thing off.)

There are three more Rooks lurking nearby—not in Edward’s line of sight, but visible from the rooftop Jacob’s on. That’s the sort of thing they do when they’re planning to jump some bastard Blighter.

That doesn’t make sense. They know Edward’s an ally, they let him lead them in Southwark. So what the bloody hell are they doing now?

Jacob frowns and creeps closer. For all that the Rooks work for him, they still almost never look up.

He’s close enough to hear one of the Rooks saying, almost conversationally, “So how long have you been one of them bloodsuckers?”

Edward laughs. “Bloodsuckers? Mate, you’ve been reading too many Penny Dreadfuls.”

“I dunno, have we?” the Rook says.

“You were damn good in a fight in Southwark,” one of the others adds. “Too damn good in a fight. Never seen a human move that fast.”

“And we’ve never seen you when it’s daylight out,” the third one (that Edward knows about) chimes in. “Got anything to say to that?”

If Edward’s getting nervous, he’s doing a damn good job of not showing it. “Oh, so you three magically have eyes on every corner of the city at all hours of the day?” He scoffs. “Please. I’m generally at Henry Green’s shop during the day.”

(He’s not, Jacob knows. Greenie has too many windows.)

“Not that you lads are particularly the reading type,” he goes on, “are you?”

“You can stop trying to hide it,” one of the lads says, not acknowledging that last remark. “We’ve hunted your kind before. And we’ll do it again. Chastity, now!”

Two of the Rooks in hiding suddenly lunge for Edward—do they really think they can hold him there? Except the third (maybe the unfortunately-named Chastity) lunges forward too, and she’s got something—Jacob can’t quite make out what, in the darkness, but it looks like a weapon—in her hands.

Edward snarls and rips himself free like it’s nothing, and drives his foot into Chastity’s knee. The resulting crunch of bone is loud enough that Jacob can hear it from up on the rooftop, and Chastity goes down with a scream.

He spins around to face his opponents, flicking his wrist to free the hidden blade—and then he looks up. He meets Jacob’s eyes for a moment. His lips part in surprise.

That momentary distraction is all that one of the other Rooks needs to pull something out of his coat and shove it forward, directly into Edward’s chest.

And Jacob sees red.

“What the hell do you lot think you’re doing?” he demands, leaping down to place himself between Edward and the others. A couple of the Rooks startle. The rest don’t. Edward’s just... watching him, which he will worry about later since there’s no way in hell he can be taken down that easily.

“Right. Hello, Jacob, I know this looks bad,” says the one who’d called for Chastity, “but we’ve been doing this far longer than we’ve been working for you. Trust me when I say I know a monster when I see one, and that man’s been using you and your sister... hell if I know how long, but that stops tonight. That’s all they know how to do anymore.”

“You’re better off without him,” says the one who’d stabbed Edward.

(And, as if on some sort of twisted cue, there’s a muffled thump from that direction.)

Jacob doesn’t dare turn his back on the soon-to-be former Rooks.

“He hasn’t been using either of us,” he snaps, glowering at the lot of them.

“Sure he hasn’t,” one of the others scoffs. “My sister was never the same after one of his kind got their fangs into her, and she was one of the lucky sods they didn’t drain dry.”

“So that makes doing that to the man who’s only ever gone after Blighters fine?” Jacob says, barely keeping himself from shouting.

“That’s what you think,” one of the group says at the exact same time as another one goes, “So far.”

“Someone’s got to do it,” Chastity hisses from her position on the ground. “Thought you of all people would understand that, Jacob Frye.”

“That’s the sort of shit I’d expect to hear from the Templars,” Jacob says darkly. “I expect better than that from the Rooks.”

Chastity, it seems, does not have a response to that.

“He’s probably working with the Templars!” one of them tries, which is solidly the stupidest thing Jacob’s heard all night.

“No,” Jacob says, “he’s not.” As he speaks, he slowly moves his hand toward the kukri sheathed at his hip. “And if you’d used your bloody heads, you’d know that already.”

“Is there really nothing we can—” The soon-to-be ex-Rook who said that’s silenced with a raised hand from the one that Jacob’s getting the feeling is the ringleader of this little group.

“Don’t even bother reasoning with him,” the leader says in a voice heavy with disgust. “We didn’t want to fight you, Jacob. Was hoping we could recruit you. But that bloodsucking bastard got to you first. Maybe we’ll have better luck with your sister, ‘cause she’s clearly smarter than you.”

Jacob doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response. Instead, he pulls the kukri free of its sheath and drives it into the ringleader’s throat without hesitation. He wrenches it free and whirls on the next two, gutting one with his hidden blade, and the other with the kukri.

They’re dead before the ringleader even finishes hitting the ground.

The other two still standing don’t last any longer, but that’s around the time something hits him in the shoulder, though not very hard. It’s a piece of wood, sharpened on one end, and he’s got a pretty good guess on who probably threw it at him given the grimly-resigned glare Chastity is giving him.

“Nice try,” Jacob growls, before throwing the kukri. It embeds itself in her neck, and she dies just as easily as the rest of the former Rooks.

That leaves him and Edward. Who hasn’t moved from where he’d collapsed face-first onto the pavement.

The realization that Edward is too still—that he’s not breathing—crashes into Jacob with all the force of a speeding train.

Jacob drops onto his knees beside Edward, and hesitantly rolls him over. And it’s easy enough to see why he’s unmoving—Jacob’s killed enough people to know that the piece of wood in his chest most definitely pierced his heart.

“...Shit,” Jacob says shakily, which doesn’t even begin to cover it. “If being stabbed in the heart is something you can miraculously recover from, anytime now would be grand.”

There’s no response. Of course there isn’t. Jacob never gets to say goodbye when it matters.

(And the last thing he said to him had been the worst thing he could think of, in the heat of the moment.)

Jacob drags his hands through his hair, knocking his hat from his head in the process.

“Shit,” he says again, more emphatically. “Fuck, I...”

He trails off, because he has nothing to say.

Jacob hasn’t cried in years. Had no real reason to, and it’s not like his father would have wanted him to if he did.

His vision’s beginning to blur now, as he chokes out the words, “I’m sorry. You were—you were right, I should’ve been more damn careful, I just—I just didn’t think...”

Evie will never believe him, that it happened like this. But she’ll blame him, for sure, and this time he’ll even deserve it. He should have stepped in sooner. He should have done something instead of just watching—

Evie said... something about a wooden stake. He remembers her saying something about a wooden stake, and Edward, and he really wishes he’d been paying more attention to that specific conversation now.

Jacob presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, trying to stem the flow of tears and to think at the same time.

They’d... found him in the basement of his old house. Greenie and his sister. And he’d had a stake in his chest. Jacob remembers the rough shape he was in, that first night on the train.

It was because he’d been staked, just like this.

Which means it can be undone.

Does he just... pull the stake out? He’s got no better ideas, and a whole lot of worse ones, so before he can talk himself out of it he grabs the stake with both hands and pulls.

And Edward’s eyes snap open.

“Bloody hell,” he groans, “how long was it this time?”

Jacob can’t help it. He just stares.

(He’s all too aware that Edward still isn’t breathing.)

“...Five minutes?” he offers, though he’s not sure. “Maybe ten.”

Edward’s still capable of sighing in obvious relief, apparently.

“Good, that’s... good,” he says roughly.

“Thought you were dead, for a second there,” Jacob says. The words don’t manage to come out quite as casually as he hoped they would.

“Not quite,” Edward says as he pushes himself into a sitting position.

“Good,” Jacob says. “If anyone asks, these bastards got killed by Blighters. Or they were Blighters pretending to be Rooks. The bloody idiots tried to tell me you were working with the Templars.”

He snorts. “They’re well over a century late for that one.”

Jacob nods. “Did you hear anything, after...?”

He mimes one of those things going into his chest before he can think better of it.

“Not after you landed in front of me,” Edward says, shaking his head. “Some Kindred are... aware of what’s going on while they’re staked. I’m one of the unlucky bastards who’s not.”

Shit. “So you didn’t hear a thing I said.”

It’s kind of a relief to know that, but also means that Edward didn’t even hear his apology (not that he’d expected Edward to hear it, but...)

Edward shakes his head again, slower this time.

“No,” he says softly. “Sorry, lad.”

Now it’s Jacob’s turn to laugh. “I’m the one who should be sorry. You’re nothing like my father.”

And however much his sister would hate him if he ever said it out loud, he’s glad their father’s dead.

Edward smiles a little, and rests a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “It’s alright.”

“...Don’t tell Evie I said this,” Jacob says, very quietly, “but I would have much rather had you than him.”

The smile fades, but Edward doesn’t drop his hand.

“I wasn’t a good father to my own children,” he says, just as quiet. “The opposite, really. Especially to my daughter.” He sighs, closing his eyes. “Every time I try to avoid repeating the mistakes of my past, I find new ones to make instead.”

“At least we know you still can?” Jacob jokes. Before he adds, more seriously, “You’re still here.”

“There is that, I suppose,” Edward says, opening his eyes to glance over at Jacob.

“More than he can say,” Jacob mutters.

Edward nods slowly. He lets his hand fall from Jacob’s shoulder, and he looks up at the sky instead.

“I... may have been too harsh with you, earlier,” he says.

And that really cements how different he is from Jacob’s actual father, because on the very off chance he would’ve admitted he might have been wrong, he never would’ve done that to Jacob’s face. Maybe to Evie’s, if she was lucky, but that still was never a guarantee.

“You were right about not stashing the body in the vault,” Jacob says. “That was stupid.”

Before he can change his mind, or think things through, or any number of other things he’s sure Evie would have done—but then, Evie had apparently been shaken enough by the business with the mage to do the same thing, so maybe he’s just in the hugging mood now—he wraps his arms around Edward, and he scrunches his eyes shut before his vision can blur too much again, and he tries not to think too hard about how different his life might have been if his own father had been just a little bit more like Edward Kenway.

Edward freezes for a moment with a surprised noise, and Jacob’s about to pull away and start apologizing, before the man’s arms come up to wrap around him tightly.

“I’ve probably done stupider,” he chuckles against Jacob’s shoulder.

“Not sure I believe that,” Jacob says, entirely because he really wants to hear about the stupider.

“Well, if you haven’t gone deep-sea diving in shark-infested waters, I wouldn’t recommend it, lad.”

“...I can see,” Jacob says slowly, “how that would be stupider.”

“I told you,” Edward replies, chuckling again. He gives Jacob a slightly tighter squeeze, then pulls back enough to look at him and says, wryly, “I suppose I ought to get a different shirt.”

“Greenie got you that one, right?”

“Yeah,” Edward agrees. “I’m glad he thought of it, honestly.”

“He might need to get you another one,” Jacob says with a nod. “Doubt there’s any fixing that up.”

“...Yeah,” Edward says more tiredly.

Though it isn’t exactly ideal to hop back onto the train only to discover that both Henry and Evie are back from whatever they were doing tonight, Edward has to say that the looks on their faces at another bloody hole in his shirt almost manage to collectively make it worth the explaining he’s going to have to do.

“I might not have been subtle enough during the gang war,” he says with a shrug that probably doesn’t quite manage to be nonchalant.

“Self-proclaimed monster hunters aren’t allowed in the Rooks anymore,” Jacob offers. “Starting tomorrow.”

“...Are you alright?” Henry asks, which is really not a question Edward wants to answer. From the way his eyes are darting between Edward and Jacob, it could be directed at either of them. Or both.

Evie is still staring, open-mouthed and visibly alarmed.

Jacob doesn’t look like he wants to answer the question either, so Edward forces a smile and says, “Well, it’s better than being staked for another hundred and thirty-three years.”

“Yes,” Evie says after a long hesitation, “yes it is.”

He’s immensely grateful, after that, for her changing the subject as quickly as she does.

Chapter Text

Though Evie has become significantly more nocturnal of late, and is rather aware that she isn’t alone in this, she makes an effort to at least be reachable during the daytime. Just in case.

It’s largely good fortune (and the fact that she couldn’t sleep) that results in her being available and ready when the news she was waiting for arrives in the form of Henry Green.

“Thorne is at the Tower,” he says immediately. Urgently. “Tearing the place upside-down, from the sound of it, so while she can’t be entirely certain...”

It’s only a matter of time until Thorne finds the Shroud, if left to her own devices. That, they both know.

...There are too many hours left in the day before sunset for Evie to chance waiting for Edward. She has no idea where Jacob is, and at present, she doesn’t particularly care. She’s going to have to do this on her own, which honestly suits her fine.

“Will your friend in the guard still be there once I’ve arrived?” she asks, standing and procuring her cane sword in the same motion.

He nods. “If you can find him once you’re inside, he may be able to help.”

“I’ll see what I can do, then.” Evie takes a deep breath as she prepares herself to leave. She turns back at the last moment. “Thank you for informing me, Mister Green.”

He looks down, murmuring something under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Of course,” he says softly, which is... not what she thinks he said, but she doesn’t have the time to press further. “Good luck, Miss Frye.”

Lots of guards, of course—Evie anticipated that. Predictable patrol routes, which Evie didn’t expect so much as hope for. Thorne is certainly already inside—she sees a few poorly-concealed Templar crosses among the guardsmen without really searching.

Hopefully, the one ally she’s likely to have here has managed to blend in. But she can adjust her plans if he hasn’t.

First things first, a better visual of her surroundings wouldn’t hurt, so—as stealthily as she can, given that this is the middle of the day—she climbs. High enough to catch a glimpse of Thorne, flanked by a pair of Templars who aren’t bothering with disguises, entering a building. Her back’s to Evie. She can’t tell if she’s wearing the key at the moment.

(Surely, she must have it on her somewhere. Thorne cannot be allowed to get her hands on the Shroud.)

Evie inhales, exhales—then blinks, and focuses. Eagle Vision has never steered her wrongly in the past. Still, it’s as unsurprising as it is mildly disconcerting to find that nearly every person she can see burns with the distinct red of an enemy.

Nearly every person.

There’s one marked in blue, currently grabbing one of the enemies. Evie can’t hear them from here, but the blue figure gives the red one a shake, so there’s likely some sort of interrogation going on.

Making her way over to them without being seen won’t be easy. But it’s still within Evie’s capabilities.

“—know you’re not with the Royal Guard,” the man highlighted in blue demands as she approaches, shaking him harder. “How many of you are there? Tell me!”

From what Evie’s seen, the answer to that question seems perilously close to all of them.

“I—I don’t know,” the Templar stammers. “Miss Thorne didn’t say how many of us she was sending!”

Evie makes doubly certain that none of the other Templars are close enough to hear before she drops down from the roof and says, “It may be safest to assume that any guard you don’t personally know has been replaced.”

It seems neither the Templar nor Henry’s ally were expecting that.

The Templar is promptly knocked out before Henry’s ally turns toward her. “You’re one of Green’s friends, aren’t you?” he asks as he drops the now-unconscious Templar on the ground.

She nods. “How much has he told you?”

“That there was likely to be increased Templar presence here.” The man pulls a face. “Doubt he realized it’d be this much. I think I could pass as one long enough to sneak you inside, except... the guards out here already know my face. You’d need to deal with them first.”

“I can do that,” Evie says confidently. “I’ll find you.”

There’s no time to be quite as careful as she would like, but she manages to avoid raising the alarm, and that will simply have to do. Her ally’s relocated to the White Tower—the building she saw Thorne enter—by the time she’s done.

He looks at her intently as she approaches. “What’s next?” he asks.

Evie has had the last several minutes to consider her approach. The plan she’s come up with is... risky, to say the least, but should it work...

“Miss Thorne wants me captured,” she says. “If she sees me in chains, she might let her guard down. Can you make it look convincing?”

She’ll want to know what Evie knows, after all. That, she can use.

He blinks at her. “You mean pretend like you’re my prisoner?” He takes a breath, then nods. “I’ll do my best, ma’am.”

If Evie couldn’t feel the fact that the shackles around her wrists aren’t actually fastened, she would certainly think it convincing enough, though it might not hold up to close inspection—or if either of them move too quickly.

“If we get too close,” the guard warns her, “those Templars might realize I’m not one of theirs.”

“Then let’s keep our distance,” Evie suggests, to a hum of agreement from her ally.

He walks her toward the entrance, and raises his voice to shout, “I’ve caught the Assassin! Open the door! Inform Miss Thorne I’m bringing in the Assassin!”

That does, in fact, result in the door being opened, as well as no small amount of jeering from what feels like (but surely cannot be) every Templar in London. Evie keeps her head held high and doesn’t dignify any of that with a response.

She wishes Edward had said where in the Tower of London the Shroud was, or at least given her a better idea of where to start searching herself. But the Templars are more than happy to point someone they believe to be one of their own in the right direction.

As little as she’d like to put so much faith in a plan that she’d had scarcely any time to put together, this could actually work. And if it doesn’t, it at least gets her past a majority of the Templars.

The guard brings her to Lucy Thorne, who had been waiting with her back to the entrance, arms folded behind her. “I found her wandering inside the walls, ma’am. Thought you’d want to speak with her.”

Thorne turns and regards her with what Evie can only describe as sadistic delight. “Welcome, Miss Frye. Care to tell me where the Shroud is?”

Evie cares not for anything of the sort, personally. She remains silent.

“As you wish,” Thorne says. “I shall find it without your help. And then, I’ll strangle you with it. Watch her closely.”

She turns her back. As surreptitiously as she can, Evie eyes the other Templars in the room. Thorne would expect her to attack at once if this was a trick, so waiting might result in her lowering her guard further.

(Or, if not... Thorne hasn’t found the Shroud yet, but she’ll be distracted by it when she does. That will be the best moment to strike.)

“Though I doubt you do know,” she goes on, almost casually. “A certain friend of yours, though? Oh, I’m rather sure he does, though he and I were never formally introduced.”

Thorne glances back, meeting Evie’s glare, and she asks, “What was his name, Miss Frye?”

She knows something. More than she should, not that it will matter so long as that something dies with her. Evie is silently weighing the merits of saying nothing or coming up with a cover story—she knows that neither of her parents had siblings, but it’s rather dubious that Lucy Thorne does, and though it’s never come up, she faintly recalls reading that he was from the same region of Wales as her mother—when her mouth opens.

Out comes the absolute last thing she should have said: “Edward Kenw—”

At the last second, Evie bites her tongue. But it’s too late. The damage has been done. She shouldn’t have—why did she say that? Why did she tell the truth?

...Lucy Thorne doesn’t look surprised by this, but pleased. A sneaking suspicion is born.

“Though I appreciate the confirmation,” Thorne says, “you need not feel too guilty for giving up his secret. I already knew.”

“It’s you,” Evie breathes, tasting blood inside her mouth. “You’re the...”

“Why, yes,” Thorne says around a smirk, “I am. Poor Miss Dipper’s name served me considerably better than the woman herself ever did.”

She is the mage. Lucy Thorne is the reason for Starrick’s home being warded. For Jacob being knocked unconscious without a fight. And, now, for Edward’s name being pried out of her very thoughts.

(Evie had known that she was Starrick’s specialist in the occult, but she’d overlooked that. She’d assumed that like most specialists in similar fields, she was all talk and couldn’t do anything of note. How many others has she overlooked like this?)

“I’ll confess,” Thorne goes on, evidently taking Evie’s silence as grounds to continue gloating, “that I knew what Mister Kenway was long before it occurred to me who he was... but it was the only possibility that made sense. Thus, here we are where he hid the Shroud over a century ago, and I offer you, Miss Frye, a choice.”

Slowly, leisurely, she produces an ornate dagger from her belt. The heels of her boots clack upon the tile flooring as she approaches.

And she says, pointing the tip of that dagger at Evie’s throat, “You can tell me everything you know about the Shroud of your own free will... or, we shall do this the hard way, and I’ll drag the truth out of you piece by piece.”

Either way, she’ll kill her. Of course.

As if in response to Evie’s own thoughts—and perhaps it is, if she can force her to reveal her mind it seems tragically reasonable to assume that she can also read its contents—Thorne continues darkly, “No one can save you now, Miss Frye. Mister Kenway cannot function during the daylight hours, and your brother would not pass within a mile of this place without raising the alarm. There was only one way this could ever have ended. Make your choice.”

Evie does.

“He told me...” she begins, then hesitates. It’s not entirely feigned. But it serves well enough to pique Thorne’s interest, prompting her to lean in closer.

“Yes?” Thorne asks.

She doesn’t risk thinking about it. She cannot risk thinking about it, not with what Thorne has already demonstrated. She simply moves, liberating her wrists from their shackles and burying the full length of her hidden blade in Thorne’s neck in a single swift motion.

The world fades out around them, only them, and Evie knows then she’s won.

“He said,” Evie tells her, “that even you were still mortal. And that mortals tend not to survive knives shoved through their throats.”

Thorne laughs scornfully, even as she’s dying. “So they don’t, and you have murdered me after all. But what good will that do you? The Shroud isn’t here.”

“You failed to find it, you mean,” Evie replies—Edward will be pleased to know she hadn’t located it yet. “I won’t fail as you did. You sought a tool of healing in order to extend your own power!”

“Not mine,” Thorne counters, “ours. You are so short-sighted. You’d hoard power and never use it, when we would better the condition of humanity.” She glowers up at Evie. “I hope you never find the Shroud. You have no idea what it truly can do.”

“Tell me, then,” Evie says.

“No,” Thorne sneers.

It’s the last thing she says. The world fades back in around Evie as the various Templars in the room to leap into action, clearly intent on ensuring her death in turn.

She helps the ally who got her this far to fight those present off, then locates the key Thorne had nearly gutted her for, and then departs through the window on his advice before reinforcements can arrive.

It only occurs to her after she’s reached the boat she arrived on—much too late to turn back, at this point, given the loudly clanging alarm bells—that she’d forgotten to use her handkerchief. That’s... honestly the least of her concerns now. At least she has the key.

She’d never gotten a good look at it, before, caught up as she was first with the utter shame of having been caught sneaking after Edward and then with being stabbed in the back. The key is clearly a necklace with a purpose, with the metallic rectangle as a centerpiece rather than the gemstones or baubles that most would wear.

It feels odd, tucked underneath her overcoat. But she’d rather not have it stolen from literally under her nose before returning to the train.

And then, she has several hours to figure out how to explain what happened to the man whose name she (shouldn’t have) revealed to Lucy Thorne. It still doesn’t feel like enough time, but perhaps no amount of time would be.

Evie really would have preferred to explain herself to everyone at once, but there were too many hours left in the day when she returned to the train, Henry and Jacob were both there, and the former had been actively informing the latter of what she’d set off to do.

Being able to start off the conversation with Edward by setting the key she’d gotten stolen out on the desk, with possibly more force than is strictly necessary, at least allows her to confirm to begin with that things hadn’t gone too badly at the Tower. But they hadn’t gone well, either.

When she’s finished with her explanation, sparing no detail, she can scarcely look at him.

“...In conclusion,” Evie says quietly, “we shouldn’t have to worry about mortal magic-users any longer.”

“Well,” Edward says in a tone that she can’t read, “at least there’s that.”

He picks up the key, turning it over in his hands before he sets it back on the desk. (Evie’s surprised it hasn’t immediately disappeared into his coat.)

“I’m surprised she didn’t manage to find it,” he adds, and Evie glances briefly at his face in time to catch the puzzlement in his expression.

“She couldn’t have had very long to search the premises,” Evie says uncertainly. “I didn’t... there was no time to search myself, before I was forced to flee.”

“Given how many Templars you said there were, that’s not a surprise,” Edward says. “It’s good you got out in one piece.”

“Mister Green’s ally in the guard did, as well,” she reports, “though I wasn’t certain of that until later.”

Edward nods, then says bluntly, “You got lucky.”

“...I know,” she replies, even quieter than before. “I could not let her win again.”

“And you didn’t,” he comments.

Perhaps not. But it was over for Thorne much more quickly by far than it was for her, something that brings Evie no comfort, only a dull ache in her back that grows more difficult to ignore after dark.

“She claimed, before she died, that I had no idea of what the Shroud could truly do,” Evie muses out loud. “She could have simply been taunting me.”

Edward considers her thoughtfully. “What do you know of the Shroud’s capabilities?” he asks.

“It’s said to be able to heal any wound,” Evie begins. “Beyond that... little more than inconsistent speculation. Unless you mean to tell me that it truly can bring back the dead?”

He shakes his head. “No, it can’t,” he says. “But the healing alone is enough to make the wearer nearly invulnerable.”

“I can see how that could be mistaken for a resurrection,” Evie says, after a pause.

Edward shrugs. “It would probably also work on someone who had nearly bled out, but hadn’t quite died yet. Can’t say I’ve tested that myself, though.”

“Perhaps better to avoid the need to.” She clears her throat. “I don’t know that I’d advise going back tonight, given that the true Tower Guard will likely still be rather on edge, but it may be worth... at least checking on it. When you can.”

She nods to the key on the desk, not looking at it or him, and says, “I won’t follow you this time.”

“Aye,” Edward says. In her peripheral vision, Evie sees him reaching out to take it, before he loops the key around his neck. “I’ll do that.”

In her mind, Evie saw that proceeding differently. That perhaps offering not to follow him would result in him deeming her trustworthy enough to come along—but then, why would it? She’d broken the Masquerade that, especially considering recent events involving the Rooks, is more important now than ever to maintain. She knows better than him that, in the end, she’d only retrieved the key to the Shroud through sheer dumb luck.

So she nods, and says, “I’ll be dealing with Outteridge Manufacturing,” and makes for the door before she can say anything else she’ll regret.

Edward has had worse nights. He can say that with confidence—hell, he had a worse night only a few ago, because being staked is hardly enjoyable.

That said, he’s not happy to find that the Shroud is not where he left it. Not least of which because he has no idea when it was moved, who moved it, why they moved it, or where they moved it to.

“It’s probably for the best you didn’t come with, lass,” Edward says as he enters the blasted train, and the car that Evie Frye is sitting in. “It wasn’t where I left it.”

Evie stares at him with a baffled enough expression in return that Edward genuinely has to wonder if he’s spontaneously grown a second head.

“That... would explain why Thorne couldn’t find it,” she says, very uncertainly.

“It would,” he grumbles, “but that doesn’t bloody explain where it is.”

Her brow furrows. “It couldn’t have been the Assassins or the Templars. Not without the key.”

“I suppose not,” Edward allows with a heavy sigh.

“Surely, it hasn’t just vanished into thin air...”

Edward doesn’t particularly want to watch Evie attempt to work out the same thing he has been, to little effect, attempting to since he left the Tower utterly empty-handed and incredibly peeved. He turns to begin pacing back and forth instead, out of a lack of anything better to do.

“At least we have the key again, so even if the Templars uncover the location before we do, they can’t do much,” he says.

It’s about the fourth time he’s reminded himself of that, but clinging to the facts of the situation is about the only thing keeping him from giving into the Beast’s desire to destroy things, at present. At least he now has a firm enough grasp on it to not be a danger to any mortals—like Evie—in his general vicinity.

“Perhaps Mister Green can find something,” she says hopefully. “He’s off seeing if we can secure her notes before the Templars reclaim them.”

“Well, good luck to him with that,” Edward says, dragging a hand through his hair. “With his information network, I’d wager he’s got good odds of finding something.”

“In the meantime...” Evie sighs. “I’m still not entirely certain where to begin cleaning up Jacob’s mess with the bank.”

“Aye, that is an issue.” Edward stops pacing, and turns to look at her. “We might just need to wait,” he continues, frowning. “Let the newspapers find some other story to latch onto.”

Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t seem to like that answer.

“They always do sooner or later,” she comments, “but in this case I would favor sooner.”

“So would I, lass. So would I.”

“Other than that,” Evie says in a tone that suggests this to be an incredibly big caveat, “the liberation of this borough is proceeding well. Perhaps we can distract the newspapers with another gang war.”

Edward nods—then grimaces. “I... may stay away from the next one,” he says reluctantly.

“If Jacob is unavailable, I’ll lead it myself,” Evie says, looking suspiciously like she won’t be thrilled if it comes to that.

“Given how disappointed he was to miss the last one, I think he’ll make a point of being available,” Edward says. Now that they’ve taken care of the mage problem—hopefully in its entirety—that should be less of an issue.

“I suspect so,” Evie agrees wryly. “His immediate response to hearing about the Blighters for the first time was to declare that he’d always thought of himself as a gang leader and come up with a name for his then-nonexistent opposing gang on the spot.”

Edward laughs. “I can’t say that surprises me, lass.”

“...Names aside, he is better at that than he ever was at chess,” she says.

Edward thinks he can draw his own conclusions from that statement. “It seems to suit them, for the most part. Would-be monster hunters excluded.”

She gives him the very shallowest of nods, then looks away. “The Templars who heard your name are all dead, and our ally in the Tower Guard was sworn to secrecy regarding what he heard. If there are others, it... should not be because of my failing.”

“Most would have a difficult time proving that it isn’t just someone who decided to take up the name for himself,” he points out with a shrug. “It’s not as if anyone is likely to guess the truth without having seen it with their own eyes.”

“Still,” she says tightly. “I’d rather they not have the opportunity to try.”

“Oh, aye, but if any Kindred is going to draw their ire, it’s more likely to be one who didn’t spend the last hundred and thirty-three years in torpor.”

She sighs. And she says, more bluntly, “I should have been able to resist Thorne, or at the very least cut myself off sooner. I did not.”

Edward sighs as well, and resigns himself to dealing with Evie Frye’s martyr complex.

“You didn’t know she was the mage until she told you,” he says. “That’s not the sort of thing you can resist if you don’t know to expect it. It’s not your fault, lass.”

“It was far too obvious that she was in retrospect,” Evie argues, taking the fact that he’d told her to her face not to blame herself about as well as he expected. “I should have figured it out earlier. Much earlier.”

“In retrospect, after you’d realized what she’d done,” Edward says. “Mages like her, the sneaky ones? They make a point of not being obvious about it until they’re twisting your mind around to get exactly what they want out of you.”

She doesn’t seem to have a response prepared for that.

“...I expected you to be angry,” she says at last.

“At her, sure. But not at you.”

Slowly, she nods.

“I... may turn in for the night a little early,” she says, as if it isn’t already past midnight by Edward’s reckoning.

“If you want,” Edward says easily. “No need for you to stay up on my account.”

Evie doesn’t have to be told twice, as it turns out, a clear sign that she is more tired than usual. She ducks her head again in a more hesitant nod and makes for the front of the train without another word.

Edward sinks into her vacated chair with a sigh, and contemplates how much he would have liked the opportunity to give Ethan Frye a good shake for how badly he’d failed both of his children.

(Maybe it would assuage the guilt over how badly Edward did by his own. Though he doubts it.)

Chapter Text

“A letter,” Jacob says, raising an eyebrow. “For me?”

That’s something of a first.

He flips it open, scans the contents... and blinks.

“A dinner invitation,” he says out loud, as if that will make it less baffling.

“And with whom are you dining this evening?” his sister asks from behind him.

Jacob represses the urge to sigh as he turns to look at her. “Maxwell Roth.”

“The leader of the Blighters?” Evie says, as if there is any other Maxwell Roth he could be speaking of. “You’re not going.”

He swallows the retort that almost bursts out of him at her patronizing tone.

“Of course not,” he replies, smiling through gritted teeth.

What Evie doesn’t know won’t hurt her, after all.

Less than an hour later, Jacob finds himself standing outside the Alhambra Music Hall with that dinner invitation tucked away inside his coat. The sun is setting, shadows lengthening as he approaches the building, but it hasn’t fully set yet.

There’s no response at the front door. Jacob frowns.

“Hmm.” He looks around. Then he mutters to himself, “Better check the back.”

Around the side of the building he goes. There’s a doorman waiting at the next entrance he finds. He doesn’t look even a little surprised to see him, not even when Jacob produces said invitation. Shame.

“I’m here to see Mr. Roth,” he says.

“Weapons?” asks the doorman.

“No, thank you,” Jacob says cheerfully. “I’ve got my own.”

The doorman looks decidedly exasperated, which was basically the reaction Jacob was going for.

“You should be on the stage, sir,” he says in a monotone. “This way.”

The doorman opens the way in for him and stands to the side. Jacob cheerfully strides past the other man, then looks around, trying to take everything in.

He has no idea what to expect from Roth, really. Though that just makes things more interesting.

The music hall is about as high class on the inside as it was on the outside. It’s also populated by people who look like theatre workers, for the most part—with the notable exception of a table set for what appears to be the dinner Jacob was invited to, and the man standing next to it. That can only be Maxwell Roth. He looks... surprisingly normal.

“Ah! Our honored guest has arrived!” Roth exclaims, turning as he approaches. There’s a jagged scar marring his right cheek, which is a good reminder that he’s dangerous—Jacob is willing to bet that whoever or whatever gave him that came out of it worse off than him. “Come sit.”

There’s already a bottle of some kind—Jacob can’t see a label, if there is one—in Roth’s hand. He grabs a tankard to pour into as Jacob takes a seat.

“I’ve had my eye on you for some time,” Roth says, setting the tankard in front of Jacob.

Jacob picks it up, and as Roth briefly turns away, he sniffs a bit. It doesn’t seem poisoned, so he takes a sip. Well, he’s had worse.

“I find your heroics in battling the great Crawford Starrick quite magnificent,” Roth continues.

“I’ve been picking off your soldiers one by one,” Jacob replies with his best cocky smirk. “Doesn’t that make you angry?”

“On the contrary,” Roth says easily, leaning in closer to say with feeling, “Surprise is the spice of life!”

He turns away, grinning like the madman Jacob is beginning to suspect he is, and goes on, “Now Mister Starrick, that’s a different story.” Still grinning, he meets Jacob’s eyes again and drawls, “I’m drowning in directives. All terribly boring.”

And then he leans in, pouring himself a drink from the same bottle—definitely not poisoned, good, Jacob likes not being poisoned—and says conspiratorially, “Let’s say we work together, and bring him down?”

Jacob can practically hear Evie scolding him in the back of his mind, and Edward’s reminder to actually think through his actions is in there too.

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that,” he says before taking another drink.

Roth doesn’t seem dissuaded. The opposite, in fact.

“My friend,” he says earnestly, “if I fail to provide you with the chance to cause Starrick some pain...”

He stands, gesturing to their surroundings with a single arm. “...Well, you can charge into this theatre and kill me yourself.”

Well. That’s an enticing offer.

Jacob leans back in his chair, raising his eyebrows at Roth. “What do you get out of all this?”

Roth spreads his arms wide. “The chance to have a little fun with the bravest man in London!”

And then he raises the bottle to him, which is even more flattering. Jacob chuckles softly, looks down, then raises his tankard toward Roth.

“You have a deal,” he says lowly, looking the man in the eye.

The devilish grin returns in a flash, and Roth clinks the bottle against Jacob’s tankard. They both drink.

He might just enjoy this new partnership of theirs. Here’s to it going better than the last, though that’s not hard.

As they finish their drinks, Roth looks past Jacob to shout, “Lewis! My carriage!” He looks back to Jacob and grabs another bottle from the table. “Shall we?”

He doesn’t wait for a response before heading off, so Jacob leaps to his feet and follows.

His carriage is a fancy thing, and Roth hops right up onto the driver’s bench before shuffling over to make space for Jacob. “Well, you don’t expect me to go alone, do you?”

Jacob grins and climbs up beside him, and takes the reins when he’s instructed to.

“Driver! To St. Pancras!” Roth proclaims. “And don’t spare the horses.”

Jacob flicks the reins, and they’re in motion. Roth’s leg is pressed right up against his, and it’s distracting as hell, but Jacob drags his mind back to the present.

“I thought you and Starrick would be fighting for the same ends,” he observes. “What happened?”

“Oh, you know,” Roth says noncommittally as Jacob drives the carriage down the street. “He required my services to train his gang leaders. But the man is dreadful.”

“You don’t say,” Jacob drawls.

“Freedom, Jacob,” Roth says, resting a hand on Jacob’s knee. “Stealing that is far more than a sin. It denies us our humanity.”

Jacob’s breath catches, briefly, in his throat. It’s a good thing he has to focus on driving the carriage, or else he’s not sure he’d be able to. He’d rather not crash this particular carriage.

“Right you are,” he says, with feeling. “And St. Pancras will ease our suffering?”

Roth squeezes his knee lightly, then pulls his hand away. “The station contains a large shipment of explosives to be dispatched to Starrick & Co,” he says.

“And you intend to steal it?” Jacob guesses as they reach their destination and he parks the carriage at the side of the road.

He laughs. “What? No, I intend to blow it up!”

Jacob blinks. But Roth’s already hopped down from the carriage and started up some scaffolding, so he scrambles to follow.

Once they’re both on the roof, Roth says, “There’s a train parked inside St. Pancras.”

“Then I am to do away with Starrick’s merchandise, leaving chaos in my wake?” Jacob says. He shoves down the unwelcome sense of guilt that squirms in his insides; this goes directly against what he told Edward he’d do.

“Why not, Jacob?” he asks. “Why not?”

Roth looks at Jacob expectantly, but before Jacob can begin to put together an answer for him, the other man continues, “As we speak, the up train is headed towards us. That may help you enter the station unseen.”

“As long as it remains on the tracks...” Jacob says absently. The train is indeed barreling closer, and it isn’t as if he’s a stranger to jumping onto a moving train from above.

“I’d say good luck,” Roth comments, “but you don’t need it. I shall make certain any reinforcements from Starrick are kept away from the station.”

Jacob doesn’t reply, in favor of jumping onto the train as it begins to slow for its entry to the station.

He climbs inside the nearest car, crouches, and doffs his cap in favor of pulling his hood up over his head. The station is, entirely unsurprisingly, crawling with Starrick’s men. Blighters.

Jacob doesn’t see any civilians in the area, at least. That’s something.

Before the train has fully stopped, Jacob slips out of the car, darting through the shadows over to the nearest staircase. Normally, he doesn’t bother with throwing knives, but right now, he’d rather not be seen before finding out where the dynamite is, so the three guards on the upper walkway get dispatched with knives to their skulls.

That doesn’t help him much with the guards on the platform itself, but at least he has a better vantage point to survey the area. He loads up one of the hallucinogenic darts that Aleck taught them about months ago now. There’s not a fire nearby to turn it into a gas, but firing it into the strongest-looking Blighter in the area instead is perfectly fine with Jacob.

With his distraction secured, finding the explosives might as well be child’s play. Igniting them, and not being caught in the resulting blasts, is a little less so, but between that and the results of those lovely darts, Jacob has rather little trouble encouraging the driver to make a departure ahead of schedule.

“Think of me as another passenger,” Jacob informs the man in a low voice. “I just happen to have a rather large blade pointed at your back!”

The driver doesn’t protest any further as Jacob hustles him toward the train. He shoves the man into the engine compartment, and says, “Would you be so kind as to get up some steam?”

The driver nods hesitantly, and begins to do just that, glancing over his shoulder at Jacob on occasion as he does. The train heads out of the station, and toward the rendezvous with Roth.

Roth is waiting with a pair in Blighter colors, who Jacob cheerfully tips his hat to as the train pulls to a stop in front of them. The Blighters silently vacate the platform as the driver looks again to Jacob for instructions.

Jacob considers this, then leaps for the platform himself. The driver moves to follow, only to be held at gunpoint and forced back into the cab by the pair of Blighters.

“Splendid!” Roth declares. “Starrick will be on his knees in no time. My hat is off to you.”

Jacob nods, a little unsure of what to say, and Roth takes the opportunity to climb onto the train with his two Blighters.

“Apologies, I must run,” Roth says. “Do come see me again,” he adds, pointing intently at Jacob. Then the train begins to move. Jacob watches him go.

“What was that about, lad?”

The noise that escapes Jacob as he spins in place, hand going for his kukri before the fact that he does, in fact, know the voice of the man who’d just appeared behind him is... not exactly how Jacob expected running into Edward tonight to go. He hadn’t realized the sun had set. But the fact that Edward’s here, now... maybe it’s just a coincidence.

“Christ, you’re going to stop someone’s heart that way,” Jacob says, lowering his hand.

Edward gives him a grin that displays the fangs he normally keeps hidden. “I thought you were made of sterner stuff than that.”

“And I said nothing about that someone being me,” Jacob says. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, lad, you have a tendency to be near things when they explode.”

“They were small explosions,” he says, a tad defensively.

Edward raises an eyebrow. “Aye, but that doesn’t change the fact that you were near them.”

“...Can’t deny that.” In retrospect, saying anything about the explosions was a bad, bad move.

“Mm,” Edward hums, nodding. “Who was that?” he asks, waving after the long-departed train.

As little as he wants to tell Edward more, he’s... at least a little more likely to understand what Jacob’s trying to do here than Evie would be. And he doesn’t really want to lie to the man.

“Maxwell Roth,” Jacob says. “He’s... not what I expected. But, even he’s had enough of Starrick’s tyranny. We can use that.”

Edward takes a breath that Jacob knows he doesn’t actually need.

“...Just be careful,” he says at last. “Men like Roth, they look out for their own interests over anyone else’s.”

“I will be,” Jacob promises, ignoring the renewed pang of guilt—he’s being as careful as he can, and that’ll have to be good enough. “That said... my sister, she doesn’t need to know about this.”

“I’m no snitch, Jacob,” Edward says, shaking his head. “I won’t tell her, but... she may find out anyway. That wasn’t particularly subtle.”

“I’ll handle it,” Jacob says firmly. “If she does.”

With how much she’s still focused on the bank, and even more on finding the Shroud of Eden, he’d say he’s got decent odds of keeping it under wraps, at least for a while. Long enough.

Edward gives him a concerned look, but doesn’t try to lecture him, so that’s... something.

Judging by the lack of being cornered and lectured by her, his sister has not, in fact, found out about Jacob’s new partnership when he finds the time to swing by the Alhambra next. The doorman takes one look at him and waves him in through the back entrance without hesitation, which is an odd feeling.

When he finds Roth, the man’s seated at what might be the same table, this time regarding something in a birdcage.

“Jacob!” He meets Jacob’s eyes briefly, but doesn’t otherwise move. “He is beautiful, isn’t he?”

He is, as it turns out, some kind of small bird with dark feathers.

Jacob makes a noncommittal noise and shrugs. It’s a bird, he doesn’t really get the appeal of keeping one in a cage to look at.

Roth gives himself a shake, then stands. “I’ve planned the perfect second outing for us!” he announces.

“Have you?” Jacob asks softly, tracking Roth’s movement with his eyes.

“There’s borrowing to be done,” Roth says, turning back to Jacob, his hands continuing to move as he speaks. “Three of Starrick’s henchmen are about to disappear.”

His enthusiasm’s infectious, and Jacob can’t help grinning himself. “You sly devil.”

“Oh!” Roth exclaims, moving closer to Jacob. “And I’m coming along this time. There is no sense in giving you all the glory.” He briefly pats Jacob’s chest. “Off to my carriage we go. Lewis!”

Jacob takes a moment to catch his breath, glances back at the caged bird, and then trails after Roth.

Roth’s carriage—

“Jacob! Our carriage awaits!”

—awaits. He reaches the carriage before Jacob, of course, taking his seat up front.

“You know how it is,” Roth says. “You drive.”

Jacob distantly hopes that Roth keeps his hands to himself this time, because he still would rather not crash the carriage. He nods, takes up the reins, and they’re off.

“These cowardly fools under Starrick have built their own prisons,” Roth says, shaking his head. “It’s a dreadful waste.”

“They could be building gangs instead?” Jacob asks, giving Roth a brief grin.

Roth laughs, matching it. “No, no. Why build, when you can ebb and flow like the sea? I would not deign to pin them down.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t, would you?” Jacob replies, unable to keep a bit of skepticism out of his voice. “What about your bird?”

“It’s not building anything,” Roth shrugs. “It just is, my dear.”

He pats Jacob on the knee. Jacob swallows heavily.

“I dare say,” he continues, as Jacob realizes they’re approaching their destination and pulls the carriage over, “I shall never tire of the National Gallery.”

Jacob dismounts as he does, grateful for the change in subject. “Why does Starrick interest himself with art?”

“He’s hired a fiendishly talented woman, one Hattie Cadwallader, to procure works for him,” Maxwell explains. “She has excellent taste.”

“We’re kidnapping her for the sin of being Starrick’s collector?” Jacob asks.

Maxwell simply nods and makes a gesture that clearly translates to ‘get on with it’, so Jacob says, “Bring your carriage around and wait for the cargo. I shan’t be very long.”

Finding Cadwallader is, as it turns out, much more difficult (and involves altogether too much time in the sewers) than kidnapping the woman. It’s raining by the time that that Jacob escorts her back out of them, and back to where Maxwell is waiting.

“Why, Miss Cadwallader!” Maxwell exclaims as Jacob opens the door and bodily throws the woman inside. “What a pleasant surprise!”

“You’ll be hearing from Mister Starrick, Roth!” comes the very indignant response.

“Ha!” Maxwell seems as unconcerned by this as he is by everything else. “I look forward to it!”

Jacob climbs back into the driver’s seat and takes up the reins once more. He glances at Maxwell, and asks a question that’s been tugging at him since he first received the dinner invitation. “Why the Alhambra?”

“Every good criminal needs a place to invest his ill-gotten gains,” Maxwell replies. “And what’s better than distracting the world with a little light entertainment while you do so?”

“Oh, come now,” Jacob counters. “You can’t tell me you don’t enjoy the triumph of a well-received play? The plaudits and praise? The reviews?”

“I enjoy being entertained, Jacob!” Maxwell’s hand lands on Jacob’s thigh, and he damn near makes the carriage swerve in response before catching himself. “If one of the productions pleases me, I am over the moon. The theatre is in my blood. As you so astutely discerned, theatricality is... something of a Roth specialty.”

Jacob truly never would have noticed. Never.

“Ah, the park,” Maxwell goes on. “The dwelling place of Starrick’s head of security, one Benjamin Raffles. Those who cross him tend to disappear without warning.”

“Sounds like we’ll be fast friends,” Jacob says blithely as he all but throws himself from the bench. He tries to ignore the phantom feeling of Maxwell’s hand still on his thigh. Better to focus on the job he’s been given.

“Be careful,” Maxwell warns, “his guards are never far away.”

Jacob tosses him a quick salute before he takes off running.

He slows his pace once he’s actually into the park—it’s crawling with Blighter guards, and clearly not the sort loyal to Maxwell Roth over Crawford Starrick. At least they’re easy enough to distinguish from the civilians present. Raffles himself is easy enough to find, and Jacob gets up behind him when there’s a moment with no guards watching.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Raffles demands. “Did Roth send you? The villain!”

“You have your villains mixed up, Mister Raffles,” Jacob says in an even voice. “The man you work for is the real villain here.”

He marches the man right past his own guards, who really ought to be doing a better job than they are. Maxwell hasn’t moved the carriage, so it’s right back to where Jacob left him.

“My most fragrant Raffles!” he says by way of greeting. “How very good to see you again!”

“Go to hell, Roth!” Raffles snaps.

“It’s into the back with you, then,” Maxwell says, and Jacob unceremoniously shoves Raffles into the carriage.

Their third destination is Scotland Yard of all places, but if Maxwell is aware of Jacob’s last visit, he at least doesn’t bring it up.

“Who am I looking for?” Jacob asks, once they’re approaching.

“Charles Swinebourne. A copper by day, and snitch by night,” Maxwell says. “Remove him from the pack, and you cut Starrick’s ties to the police force.”

The fact that Maxwell’s leg bumps his right then cannot be a coincidence, though Jacob at least manages to keep the carriage from swerving too badly. This time.

Jacob clears his throat, and hopes his voice doesn’t come out obviously strangled when he replies, “Must be good at what he does to keep the charade going for so long.”

Somehow Jacob’s still not prepared for Maxwell to put his hand on his thigh again, and he’s even less prepared for what comes out of his mouth. “He is indeed, dear boy.”

It is, frankly, a fucking miracle that Jacob doesn’t take out a lamp post as he parks.

“All these bobbies give me gooseflesh,” Jacob comments as he disembarks.

“Welcome to Scotland Yard,” Maxwell says with a smile that suggests he doesn’t believe that’s all there is to it any more than Jacob himself does.

Jacob uses his rope launcher to get up onto the nearby roof, and tries to ignore the feeling of Maxwell’s eyes burning into his back as he goes.

At least with this visit to Scotland Yard, he knows how he got here. And Swineborne is, conveniently, right near the window that Jacob swings himself through. He’s got the man’s arm twisted behind his back before he can react. “Now, now, Swineborne,” he purrs into the man’s ear. “Let’s not make a scene.”

“You’re not going to get away with this!”

“Oh, but I am,” Jacob says cheerfully.

And he does, despite having to take a much longer route back to Maxwell’s carriage.

“Chester!” Maxwell exclaims.

Swinebourne squints at him. “Roth? It’s been a while.”

“You’ve really let yourself go,” Maxwell comments. “Shame. Now, it’s into the back with you!”

The ferry stop is just down the road. A couple of Maxwell’s Blighters are there to greet them and herd their captives onto a waiting steam boat. That’s it, then.

“Excellent work,” Maxwell says, grinning at Jacob. He rests a hand on Jacob’s shoulder, and despite the many layers of fabric between them, Jacob swears he can feel the heat of his hand. “Do come find me at the Alhambra, I have more amusements planned for us.”

His touch lingers a moment longer, and then Maxwell turns and strides onto the boat. Jacob swallows hard, and watches him sail off down the Thames.

Fortunately for the sake of unexpected surprises that turn up out of nowhere and scare the living daylights (ha) out of Jacob, the sun hasn’t set—nor is it all that close to setting—when all that’s finished. Jacob goes after one of the local Templars, just so he can say he’s been doing something, and then...

Well. He could go back to the train. But the Alhambra is on the way back to the train. It’d barely even be a detour.

Lewis doesn’t even bother to say anything when Jacob approaches this time; he simply opens the door and steps out of the way.

At first, there’s no sign of Maxwell, although there are a few of his employees scattered around the place, working on costumes and set pieces. The bird is still in its cage, idly pecking at the bars.

No one else around tells him not to, so Jacob starts poking around in search of Maxwell.

He’s just stepped into a room that appears to be an office of some kind when a firm hand on his chest backs him into the door, which shuts with a loud click. Maxwell gives him a sharp, satisfied grin.

“There you are, my dear.”

He hasn’t moved his hand. And before Jacob can figure out a damn thing to say, Maxwell leans in to claim Jacob’s lips with his, in a kiss that is more force than finesse. It’s possessive, if he had to put a label on it.

Well, kissing him back solves the problem of figuring out what to say. It’s been some time. He can’t say he’s surprised when Maxwell’s hands wander toward the buttons on his waistcoat. And it only seems fair to do the same in turn.

Jacob might be a while longer after all.

It’s late, and Edward hasn’t seen a single sign of Jacob. He knows the lad is capable of taking care of himself, but given what happened the last time he was missing... he worries. Evie’s concerned, as well, though she’s clearly trying to pretend that she’s not.

Edward’s just about made up his mind to go look for him when Jacob enters the train car, whistling to himself. When he sees the two of them in the car, he gives them a cheery salute.

“Got one of the Templars on Greenie’s list,” he announces, already making for the next car. “I’ll go mark him off.”

He doesn’t wait for a response before the door swings shut behind him.

“...He’s in an oddly good mood tonight,” Evie comments, brow furrowing.

Edward frowns, and says nothing.

Chapter Text

Jacob’s about to enter the Alhambra, looking for Maxwell, when who steps out the same entrance with a brief nod to Lewis than precisely the man he was looking for.

“Ah! This way, my dear,” Maxwell says without even a moment’s hesitation, and Jacob does not miss the way his eyes linger on his mouth. “I’ve something to show you!”

Jacob falls in behind him without missing a beat. He’s unsurprised to see that they’re headed toward the carriage that Jacob keeps almost crashing because Maxwell keeps distracting him as he drives.

“Hop in!” he says as he climbs up onto the bench.

Jacob climbs up beside him, takes the reins, and asks, “Where are we going?”

“One of Starrick’s workshops, where they build weapons for his army.” Out of the corner of his eye, Jacob can see that devilish grin of his. “When the world is full of nasty things, we must tear those things apart. A man like Starrick builds a world around his own desires, so we lose the ability to dream for ourselves. Therefore, we must—”

“Strike,” Jacob finishes.

“Precisely, my dear!” Maxwell’s hand is on Jacob’s thigh again and it’s distracting enough that he nearly misses his next words. “No matter the cost... every second of hesitation allows Starrick to build.”

Jacob barely manages to avoid taking out a bollard as he parks the carriage. He’s just about unglued his tongue from the roof of his mouth when Maxwell speaks again.

“We’re here,” he says, drawing his hand away and hopping from the bench. “This way, dear boy,” he says, making for a ladder on the side of the building.

Jacob elects to take the rope launcher route. He squints down into the workhouse yard below.

“What a funk in here,” he mutters, halfway to himself.

“You must see the potential, dear Jacob,” Maxwell says as he climbs up after him. That’s a new one, and also not something that Jacob was particularly prepared for. “This workshop is one of Starrick’s! Set the dynamite, and let’s blow it to atoms.”

He meets Jacob’s eyes and all but purrs, “Together.”

Jacob swallows heavily and nods, “Right,” he says, his voice coming out as little more than a breathy whisper.

Maxwell holds his gaze a moment longer, grinning like the cat that got the canary. And then he’s in motion once again, clearly making for the nearest load of dynamite as he climbs down from the building.

Jacob glances up at the sky. It isn’t even midday yet, so the odds of Edward catching him in the act this time are practically nonexistent. That makes it easier to shove down the guilt as he heads for another load of dynamite to do the same.

It goes much faster with two of them at it, though Maxwell’s got no qualms about putting his own men to death if they’re fool enough to stand against him. At last, it’s back to the same roof they’d started on. Damn good place to watch the show from, with a good view of the factory as a whole.

“All rigged up,” Jacob reports as he climbs up.

“Perfect!” Maxwell declares. “Let’s put our plan into action... stand back!”

That last bit is to a handful of Blighters that clearly are on Maxwell’s side, possibly even the ones responsible for bringing the explosives here, but movement in a color that’s not Blighter red or Rook green catches his eye. Jacob turns toward it—and what he sees makes his blood run cold.

Clearly not noticing what Jacob did, Maxwell calls out, “Ready...”

“Wait!” Jacob yells, holding out a hand toward Maxwell.

“Whyever for?” Maxwell asks, a laugh in his voice.

“There are children in there,” Jacob says, pointing down at the yard. Not one of them can be older than ten.

“Jacob, my dear,” Maxwell says, and Jacob’s stomach does a funny twist that has nothing to do with attraction this time, “Starrick uses child labor to manufacture goods.” He points at the building itself. “We must put an end to his production line.”

“But not like this,” Jacob hisses.

Irritation flashes across his face. “Why not?! I can do whatever I damn well please!” He turns away for a moment, then back again. “Soon, you will understand what it is to be free, as I am.”

He walks to the edge of the roof and looks down. “Light ‘em up, boys!”

For a moment, Jacob stares in disbelief. Then, he springs into action, drawing his kukri. “No!” he screams, the word all but torn from his throat, before he takes a running leap off the roof.

The kukri sinks into the Blighter that he uses to break his fall, and the man is dead before Jacob finishes standing.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Maxwell—Roth—bellows.

“We’re not playing games anymore, Roth!” Jacob calls up to him. Then, he turns and sprints toward the workshop.

The pounding of his footsteps can’t drown out the sound of his own self-hatred, but he has to protect the kids.

If Roth says anything in response, he can’t hear it. Doesn’t want to, at this point. But the explosion goes off anyway, which might as well be a response itself. Jacob’s close enough when it does to be blown off his feet.

He picks himself back up, because he has to, no matter how much he’s aching. One of the windows is broken. He can get in through there, but the kids will need another way out.

Jacob ignores the voice in the back of his mind that sounds all too much like his father’s, telling him that this situation is his own fault for being so reckless, and throws himself through that window. He sprints across the building and kicks the door opposite the window—opposite the roof Roth was on—open.

“Out you get!” he yells. “Move quickly, no time to idle!”

Some of the children are clearly wounded, and Jacob begins to ferry them outside as the ones that aren’t hurt flee from the flames licking at the walls of the building.

He’s not even surprised when the Blighters turn up. They’re about as prepared for him as they usually are—which is to say, not—and at this point, they could be either Starrick’s or Roth’s. He doesn’t know. It makes no difference. He fights quickly, moves quickly himself—quick enough that even the Blighters seem a little taken aback, but he’s got no time to dwell on that. Getting those children out is what matters right now.

As he sets the last of them carefully on their feet outside, he risks a glance back around the building, back up at the rooftop he’d leaped from. Roth is gone already, of course. Why would he have bothered to stick around?

There’s another explosion, and Jacob backs further away from the building. And then he stares at what is, objectively, a small thing in the scale of everything he’s fucked up since coming to London.

Yet this feels so much bigger. Maybe because it’s more personal this time.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been staring at the flames, and the smoke billowing into the sky, before his attention is grabbed by Lewis, Roth’s doorman, approaching. He’s got a box in his hands.

“A gift, sir,” Lewis says in his usual monotone. “From Mister Roth.”

There’s a letter on top of the box, he realizes when he accepts it almost mechanically. He hasn’t quite gotten his eyes to focus on the looping script there before Lewis, who had been taking his leave, turns back.

“You should be warned, Mister Frye,” he says, “that when Roth is angry with one, he generally brings suffering to many.”

He doesn’t wait for a response before he leaves.

My dearest Jacob, the letter reads, and revulsion rises in his throat. Alas, it seems our adventures together have come to a close. Although our time together was brief, it’s left a lasting mark. I wish you well in all your future endeavors. Cordially, Maxwell.

Post scriptum: I’m putting on a show this evening. All of London will be there. Enclosed, please find your invitation.

The box seems a little large for an invitation. Cautiously, Jacob opens it.

He wishes he hadn’t.

Jacob doesn’t really care for most animals one way or the other. He’s indifferent, really.

But that doesn’t mean he wants them to be hurt, either, and the little black bird—the same one from the cage in the Alhambra, he’s sure—in the box is dead. It’s clearly had its neck snapped.

“Okay then,” he mutters to himself. “If that’s how it’s going to be.”

All of London was an overstatement, but not by all that much. Night is falling as Jacob watches the crowds enter the Alhambra for the performance, scanning them for any sign of Roth. He finds the man, moments before he puts on a mask that’s... being worn by at least two others Jacob can see dressed exactly the same as him. Roth turns, and walks inside.

There’s no damn way that Jacob will be able to get inside before he’s disappeared.

He’s not dressed anywhere near as fancy as any of the guests in line, but that’s the least of Jacob’s concerns as he makes his way to the front entrance. They’re all wearing masks, too, he notices. Far less ostentatious than the one Roth went for, of course.

Luckily, there’s a guard nearby wearing a very similar mask. Dragging him into a back alley, knifing him, and stealing his mask is the work of moments; Jacob’s able to join the line just as the usher begins to lead the next group inside.

He can hear Roth’s voice from further in, once they’re all in the lobby. “Mesdames et Messieurs, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Alhambra Music Hall!”

Jacob stops paying close attention as he splits off from the group, looking for somewhere to get a better view of the place. He’s climbed at least a couple flights of stairs when Roth goes on, “Tonight’s performance immortalizes and is for the benefit of a young fellow very near and dear to my heart. Any concerns or complaints may be addressed to him!”

And then the bastard laughs, and it’s actually a rather good thing that Jacob is wearing a mask because he’s sure his expression would give him away otherwise when Roth shouts out for the full theatre to hear, “Jacob, dear boy, tonight is for you!”

He’s reached a good vantage point, overlooking the entire theatre. It’s not good enough to grant him a view backstage, of course—and that’s almost certainly where Roth is—but he can see just about everything else.

Roth has decoys everywhere, he realizes when he blinks a few times to get Eagle Vision into place. And for all that it’s bloody helpful, it’s not infallible. There’s multiple targets marked in gold, and that means Jacob doesn’t know exactly where the bastard he actually wants to kill is. There are an awful lot of figures marked in red, though.

Jacob’s alone, without a plan, and surrounded by enemies. His heart is hammering in his chest, and he has to swallow down the urge to yell for Roth to stop being a coward and show himself. It won’t work, he already knows.

But doing nothing isn’t an option. Roth dies tonight, no matter what it takes. He has to be here somewhere.

The decoys go down, one by one, until there’s none left, and still no damn sign of Roth. But there’s someone tied up in the back near the last one, someone who hears Jacob beginning to pick the lock and cries, “Help! Help me! They’ve locked me in here!”

Fortunately, any others close enough to hear the man over the performance are already dead. Jacob slips inside, shutting the door behind him, and slips his hidden blade through the man’s bonds without hesitation.

“That’s a daisy. Ta muchly,” he says, rubbing his wrists.

“Why have they locked you in here?” Jacob asks roughly, though he’s not expecting much of an answer.

“I’m a machinist,” the man explains. “My job’s to lower the grid for the show, but Mister Roth was... violently opposed to anything above the stage for this one. Can’t imagine why...”

“I can.” Jacob’s eyes narrow. “Mind doing that discreetly?”

The machinist’s expression is deeply puzzled, but he nods. As he sets off to do that, Jacob finds somewhere with a better view of the stage and demands, like he’d wanted to before he had an actual plan, “Roth! Show yourself!”

Out on the stage, Roth laughs and removes his mask. If he’s worried about Jacob’s shout, it certainly doesn’t come through in his behavior.

“I hope you have enjoyed your evening so far, ladies and gentlemen!” he shouts to his audience, raising a cup in their direction. “I know I have. Now, before our final act, I would like to toast all you brave people who joined us tonight to celebrate life... and death.”

Jacob’s heart drops. That doesn’t bode well. The rafters are in place, though, and if he can just lure Roth up there... well, being up there himself is a good start.

As he’s using his rope launcher to get up there, he hears Roth yell, “Go on, toast them!”

The yell is followed by the sound of flames catching, and the audience screaming. Roth’s manic laughter rises above it all. “Your move, Jacob, my dear!”

He’s standing on the rope for the counterweight, Jacob realizes as he looks down. Luring him won’t be necessary at all—his foot’s caught in the loop. So, without hesitation, Jacob slices through the other half of the line that holds the sandbag, and Roth flies up into the rafters with a yell.

Jacob hauls him the rest of the way onto the grid. He plunges his hidden blade into the man’s neck without hesitation. The world fades out around them, and Jacob crouches beside the man who will soon be dead.

“Darling, what a night!” Roth proclaims, spreading his arms wide even as his real body is choking on the ground. “The stuff of legends.”

Bile rises in Jacob’s throat. “Why did you do it?” he asks. “All of it?”

“What? Snap a baby crow’s neck between my thumb and forefinger? Slice to bits the ones you deem ‘innocent’? Keep the world in its divine, manic state?”

The projection begins to walk away, then turns back. “For the same reason I do anything.”

And then, without any warning or preamble, the real Roth grabs him, dragging him down to smash his lips against Jacob’s own. For a moment, Jacob’s too stunned to pull away. When he does, he tastes blood, and he’s not sure if it’s his. Not sure if it’s Roth’s.

“Why not?” Roth declares. He dies laughing.

Jacob stares down at the body for several long moments, before he remembers to, more or less mechanically, swipe a handkerchief through Roth’s blood.

Then reality reasserts itself. He’s in a burning theatre.

“I’ll never make it out alive,” he realizes, staring around with wide eyes.

But he has to try. He doesn’t want to picture the look on Edward’s face, if he doesn’t.

His faint hope that the audience might have all made it out while he was killing Roth is dashed when a screaming, burning body falls nearly on top of him from one of the balconies and abruptly stops screaming by way of suddenly hitting the ground. The way to the ground floor exit’s blocked, so he leaps up for another way around, climbing desperately and looking for something, anything—

There! He drops back down and sprints, bursting out through the front door with the last of his strength. Adrenaline carries him across the street, but not much further. He’s vaguely aware of the fire crew pulling up in front of the burning building. He’s a lot more aware, suddenly, of the fact that he can barely breathe.

Jacob sits down heavily, starting to cough as he does. He’d be impressed at how thoroughly it all went to shit, except that the last thing he wants right now is to be anything approaching impressed with anything to do with Roth. So he’s not. Impressed, that is.

At least he made it out of the fire. He’s positive that some, but not all, of Roth’s audience did. What he should do is pry himself up off the ground and see if there’s anything he can do to help the survivors.

...Covered in ash and soot, coughing what feels like his entire lungs out, and doing a damn good job of feeling sorry for himself, Jacob doubts he’s the only one left reeling from Roth’s actions tonight. He’s just the only one left to know the real reason why.

But the sound of footsteps approaching him don’t sound like someone stumbling their way out of a burning theatre. They’re coming from the wrong direction, for a start. So Jacob shifts his position to better get at his hidden blade and braces himself for a fight. Or, worse, his sister summoned by all the ruckus.

He’s... not expecting to see Edward. Or, more accurately, for there to be nothing in his field of view one moment and for him to be crouched there in the blink of an eye. Jacob will never get used to how that man can move so damned fast.

The last emotion he’s expecting to see on Edward’s face is fear, but the way the man’s hand shakes as he brushes some soot off of Jacob’s cheek suggests that’s exactly what he’s feeling.

“Good to see you made it out of there, lad,” he says, in a tone that doesn’t quite manage to be casual.

“Wasn’t sure I would,” Jacob admits. His head aches, his eyes burn, and it’s only sinking in now that it’s over. Roth’s dead. A part of Jacob might have died back in that theatre with him.

Jacob doubles over with another cough, and Edward rubs a hand up and down his back. When the cough subsides, Edward asks, “What in God’s name happened in there?”

Where the hell does he even begin?

“Does Evie know yet?” he asks instead of answering.

“I doubt it,” Edward replies which is—something, at least. He’s got a few hours before he needs to start worrying about a lecture from her. “She’s business on the other side of London tonight.”

He glances over his shoulder, and Jacob feels his fingers clench in the fabric of his jacket for a moment before his grip relaxes and Edward turns back to look at him. “She might suspect you had something to do with this by the time she hears of it, but she won’t be sure unless someone tells her.”

“Are—” Jacob coughs a couple more times, not that it does him much good. “—you going to tell her?”

He really, really doesn’t need Evie telling him how badly he’d fucked this up. He knows. Christ, he knows. But he’s probably earned it, at this point, all the same. He should have known it—everything about Roth—was too damn good to be true. He should have known. But he didn’t.

“Not unless you are,” Edward murmurs. “I’m no snitch, Jacob,” he says, echoing his words from—God, it wasn’t even that long ago, but it feels like everything has changed since then.

Jacob blinks hard. He’d thought... so many things.

“...I don’t know,” Jacob says in a hoarse whisper. “Don’t want her to find out what happened here, but... there’s no way in hell she doesn’t find out at least some of it from the papers. And the rest...”

“The rest?” Edward echoes quietly. He hasn’t pulled his hand away, and there’s concern written across his face.

He shrugs. “She’s smarter than me. Always has been. She’ll figure it out. Enough of it, anyhow.”

Edward sighs. “Come on, lad. Let’s get you out of here.” He stands, and offers Jacob a hand up.

Jacob hesitates before taking the offered hand, nearly tripping as he’s pulled to his feet from the sheer force of it. Then, and only then, does he look back at the theatre. The roof of the place has fallen in, and despite the best efforts of the fire brigade, the wreckage is still smoldering. He’s struck with the sudden realization that he has no idea how long he was sitting there.

“You were right,” Jacob says at last. “Thought I knew what I was doing. Thought I could handle—”

It. Him. Maxwell Roth’s face flashes back into his mind. He swallows around the guilt.

“...I wasn’t careful enough,” he mumbles instead.

Edward lets out another, deeper sigh.

“I thought that might be it,” he says. “I... remember how that goes. All too well.”

He would, wouldn’t he? He’d been a pirate before he became an Assassin, before he ‘died’ except he didn’t, just ended up stashed away for a century and then some with not even himself the wiser. Jacob’s never understood why he’d choose that, and hasn’t thought he would any better if he asked, so he hasn’t. But that hasn’t stopped him from wondering.

“Had to kill him, once I knew what he was really like,” Jacob says quietly. “But damn, if he didn’t make it his mission to... to cause as much suffering as possible, before he went. Never should have gotten involved. Never should have taken him up on that first invitation.”

“...What’s done is done,” Edward says, but there’s sympathy in his tone. He gently steers Jacob down the road away from the rubble, a guiding hand on his shoulder. “We can’t change the past, no matter how much we wish it.”

He’s not wrong, but that doesn’t exactly do anything to make Jacob feel less awful.

“Where are we going?” he manages to ask, eventually. He hopes it’s not the train, even if Evie’s supposedly busy, because she could get back from her being busy anytime and Jacob doesn’t think he can face her right now.

(He can barely face Edward. Doesn’t think he could have, if Edward hadn’t sought him out first.)

“At the moment, just away from there,” Edward replies. “Is there anywhere you want to go?” he asks.

“Not back to—not to the train,” Jacob says, and has to take a break for another massive cough. “Anywhere but there.”

Slowly, Edward nods. “Right. Let’s see...”

His hand on Jacob’s shoulder is probably about the only thing keeping him grounded to reality at the moment as he slows his steps and looks around them.

The first and only thing that catches Jacob’s attention is a pub.

“...I could use a drink,” Jacob says, though he knows full well right now it won’t be just the one.

“Well, better than you drowning your sorrows alone,” Edward declares. “Let’s go, then.”

The pub in question’s not one that Jacob’s set foot in before, which is probably better. Ordering a drink is easy enough when he doesn’t care about the taste so much as being very, very intoxicated, though he’s dimly aware of the fact that Edward not drinking anything might pose a problem—

“Lad’s had a rough night,” Edward explains. “I’m just here to make sure he gets home in one piece.”

...That works.

The bartender looks Jacob up and down. “Might be for the best,” he mutters as he slides a tankard over to Jacob.

Edward leads Jacob over to a table in the corner farthest from the door, and gently pushes him into a chair before taking the seat opposite him. If he looks even half as bad as he feels, he can see why the man reacted like that. Why Edward did, too.

He doesn’t feel any better once he’s started drinking, but he at least feels a little more numb to how much it hurts, and that’s... something of an improvement. Enough of one that he can start explaining himself, little by little. Starting with that damned letter.

(He’d been on the fence about it before Evie told him not to go.)

Edward listens to him talk without a hint of judgment, which makes it easier to continue.

He skips over certain parts until he’s drunker, because he’ll bloody well need to be to get into any of that. At least, that’s the plan before he reaches the end too early.

“...I liked him,” Jacob admits, taking another long swig—at least he’s been coughing a lot less since he started drinking. “Really liked him. And then it turned out he was the sort to... to blow up a factory with kids in it, just because it was one of Starrick’s. To set his own damn theatre ablaze, all to spite me.”

“Aye, I could tell you liked him,” Edward says. “And... I can’t say I’m surprised about the rest, in hindsight.”

“Hindsight’s a funny little thing,” Jacob says before draining the rest of the tankard. “Never seems to change much...”

“No,” Edward sighs, “no it doesn’t.” He looks at Jacob solemnly. “I am sorry it turned out this way, lad.”

He ends up needing another drink before he can figure out how to respond to that.

And then he mumbles into it, “S’alright. Was my own damn fault.”

“Only partially,” Edward says. “The rest was Roth. Not you.”

Edward sounds like he really believes that, too, which is worse. Jacob doesn’t think he gets how that’s worse.

“You get how that’s worse, yeah?” he asks anyway.

“...Yeah,” Edward admits. “Still. It isn’t your fault he manipulated you.”

Jacob blinks hard, considering this. It’s not like he wasn’t aware of that, at least on some level—most people wouldn’t court traffic accidents by distracting the man driving for no reason. But Maxwell Roth wasn’t most people. He never had been. Jacob had wanted so badly to believe that, whatever else he was, that what they’d had was real.

If anything, it had been too damn real. Roth had been... a man of passion, more than anything else. He’d been genuinely interested in Jacob, he thinks, which makes it much worse.

(And it doesn’t change the fact that he’d played Jacob like a fiddle.)

He shudders, breath catching in his throat. The physical aches and pains have lessened, but the rest hasn’t near as much. He’s not sure how many innocent people died because of Roth, but more got hurt because of him. He can still see the burning building around him when he closes his eyes for too long. Can still hear Roth’s damned laughter.

(Can still feel that last kiss, and taste it.)

“He,” Jacob tries. “I...”

Jacob raises a hand to his eyes. Funnily enough, wiping at them doesn’t seem to do much about the tears spilling forth. The opposite, really.

“Oh, Jacob,” Edward murmurs. And then the ex-pirate moves, gathering Jacob into his arms and holding him tightly. Protectively.

And a part of Jacob breaks. Maybe it broke long ago, when he and Evie were supposed to meet their father for the first time after six years. He’d hardly look at either of them, but he’d look at Jacob even less, and it only worsened from there. Or maybe it broke earlier today, when Jacob was faced with the horrid realization that he’d misjudged Roth badly.

But whenever it broke, the dam holding everything back breaks now, which results in Jacob spending the next several minutes sobbing into Edward’s shoulder like he’s half his age. Edward’s arms around him don’t falter, and he cradles the back of Jacob’s head so gently. He’s humming softly under his breath, and while Jacob doesn’t recognize the tune, it’s soothing.

He cries a while longer after that. But the first thing out of his mouth, after another long swig of something incredibly alcoholic, is to ask, “What’s that song? Don’t think I’ve... ever... heard it before.”

“Lowlands Away,” he replies. “It was always one of my favorites that the lads would sing, back on the Jackdaw.”

“...Your ship?” Jacob guesses, after several seconds of trying to connect an actual bird with what Edward’s said and several more of trying not to think about what Roth did to his bird.

“Aye, that was her name.”

Jacob slowly nods. “Can you... tell me about her?”

It’d be a brief distraction, at least.

Edward nods, and clears his throat. “Let’s see... she was a brig,” he says. “I took her from the Spanish with Adé’s help when we were imprisoned in a fleet bound for Spain, and he became my quartermaster. We turned to piracy not long after, and we were damn good at it.”

The most coherent response Jacob can muster up to that, at this point, is a vague noise of acknowledgment and something approaching a nod. This is only partially because of the spirits and partially because he does, he realizes a little too late, happen to know much less about ships, piracy, or anything else related to those topics than he thought.

Edward gives him a look that’s far too knowing, and then he looks down at the table for a moment with a soft huff of laughter.

“I’ll tell you more some other time,” he decides as he looks back up. “For now... for now, we ought to start heading back, if we’re to get you there before sunrise.”

Considering that Jacob has, apparently, done enough drinking that he’d have trouble standing on his own, before sunrise sounds like a rather good idea to him.

Edward settles the rather sizable tab that Jacob racked up before moving back over to him and hauling Jacob to his feet. “Up you get, lad, let’s go.”

Jacob sways heavily into his side, but Edward catches him easily and steers him out onto the street. It’s late enough now that there’s hardly anyone else out, which means that there are relatively few witnesses to him looking and feeling like an utter wreck.

What’s funny about trying to avoid thinking about something in particular—say, anything and everything to do with Maxwell Roth—is that it never seems to work all that well. Which isn’t helping much with the feeling like an utter wreck, that’s for damn sure.

“...I don’t even... like birds,” Jacob kind of slurs more than says, which might be a sign that he went slightly overboard—but that was the point, wasn’t it? “Don’t dislike them, just... don’t really care that much, one way or the other.”

Edward hums softly in acknowledgment. “But it still upset you to see one like that,” he says, and it’s not a question.

Jacob nods roughly. “Yeah. Can’t believe I was... wasn’t that he was all that different, was the worst part. Is the worst part.”

There’s a lot of worst parts.

“...He just went further than you thought he would,” Edward guesses.

“It would’ve cost him nothing to wait and get those kids out first. Still would’ve crippled Starrick, all the same... and it’s not like the kids knew any better, they were being forced into it too.” By Blighters, who Jacob had assumed then must have been working for Starrick—but now? He’s got no way of knowing, not for sure, how much of that Roth set up.

“From what you’ve said, he doesn’t strike me as the type to enjoy delayed gratification,” says Edward.

Jacob laughs. “Not at all.”

Edward nods, like that’s exactly what he was expecting to hear, and effortlessly steers Jacob around—some sort of obstacle that Jacob realizes his vision’s blurring too much to make out.

He thought he was done crying over this. Apparently not.

“He’s... he was,” Jacob says, because at least Roth is dead even if he might haunt Jacob for a long time to come, “the sort to... he knew what he wanted, and he knew how to get it, and he’d stop at nothing to get what he wanted. Someone told me... when he’s angry with one, he generally brings suffering to many... so I wasn’t even the first poor bastard. Just the last.”

He hadn’t seen Lewis since then. Which could mean that he’d wisely stayed the hell away from the Alhambra. Jacob hopes he did.

“Aye, that sounds about right,” Edward says quietly. “Listen, lad, I have to ask. Was he the first man that you...”

Jacob really thought he’d been more subtle than that. Despite the fact that he’s more or less been stumbling in the general direction of the train, he truly wishes that he’d had enough to drink that he wouldn’t have to think about this, which clearly would have been at least one more. Or a dozen. Maybe a dozen.

“That,” he manages, face burning. “No, he wasn’t... the problem wasn’t—isn’t—that, the problem is him.”

“Ah,” Edward says, and it sounds like he gets it, which Jacob is absurdly relieved for, even if this is still a conversation he’d rather run away from if he could stand on his own.

Unfortunately, Jacob cannot currently stand on his own.

“Never ended that badly before,” Jacob mutters. “For me or any... anybody... anyone else.”

“No, I reckon it didn’t,” Edward replies. “C’mon, we’re almost there.”

Are they? It feels like they’ve crossed half of London at this point. Jacob squints at the admittedly-blurry city street ahead. He can hear just fine, though, and that’s definitely a train’s whistle.

Largely against his will, he lists heavily into Edward’s side; it doesn’t even cause him to break his stride.

Jacob isn’t sure that he’ll ever get used to how inhumanly strong Edward is. But it certainly works out in his favor right now, as he is gently manhandled into the station and then onto the train without falling flat on his face.

“Seems we’re the first ones back,” Edward mutters as he looks around the deserted train car.

“Yeah,” Jacob agrees, and decides maybe it’s okay to fall flat on his face onto the sofa. Evie being out this late is a little strange for her, but Jacob’s not about to complain right now.

Edward rolls him onto his side, which Jacob resents a little. “Don’t need you suffocating, lad,” he says in response to whatever the look on Jacob’s face is right now.

Jacob groans, but doesn’t argue that.

A voice that Jacob was not expecting to hear—but which thankfully does not belong to his sister—speaks up then. “The hell chewed you up and spat you back out, Frye?”

It takes him an embarrassingly long time to place who the voice in question does belong to.

“...The hell are you doing here, Wynert?”

It’s very, very rare to see Ned Wynert falter, for even a second. So the fact that he hesitates for several before replying means Jacob’s already bracing himself.

“...Heard about a show at the Alhambra from someone who’d been shilling tickets,” he says.

So he definitely didn’t brace himself enough, as it turns out.

“You hear how it ended?” Jacob would have liked to ask that casually, but he thinks he left his ability to do that behind somewhere around his third drink. Or possibly the fifth. Maybe the seventh?

“...Yeah,” Ned says more quietly. “Yeah, I did. Guess that answers my question, huh.”

Jacob tries for a nod. “It’s been... rough night. Very rough night.”

“How many drinks did you even have?”

“Lost count,” Jacob mumbles.

Ned glances sidelong at Edward, who shrugs. “Figured he was going to drown his sorrows either way, and at least if I was there, he could get back here in one piece.”

Jacob can’t really argue with that logic.

“Boarding the train might’ve gotten tricky,” he admits.

“Seeing as I practically carried you in here?” Edward says dryly. He reaches down and ruffles Jacob’s hair like he’s a little kid.

“Didn’t have to tell him that,” Jacob grumbles.

Edward chuckles softly. “He probably saw it anyway, lad.”

“I did,” Ned adds unhelpfully.

Jacob sighs. “And here I was thinking... might still make it out of tonight with some dignity left over.”

“Dignity’s overrated,” Edward says blithely.

“Yeah, because you’ve got so much of it,” Jacob jokes. He’s feeling a little better, at least, he realizes suddenly. Still not great, and he’s not looking forward to the looming monster of a headache he’ll have on the morrow, but... better.

That gets Edward to throw his head back with a laugh. “Well, it takes one to know one, aye?”

Then his gaze drifts to the timepiece that lives on the desk, and he grimaces. “...That said, I ought to head out.”

Jacob’s stomach lurches, and not from the drink. He sits up, the room spinning around him as he does, and he says, “Don’t—please don’t go.”

Edward steadies him with a hand on his shoulder, and there’s a quietly devastated look in his eyes.

“I can’t stay, lad,” he says softly. “I would if I could, but I can’t.”

And Jacob knows he would. Has a damn good idea of why he can’t stay. It’s the same reason why he and Evie and Greenie have adjusted to doing a lot more by night than any of them used to. The sun’s got to be rising soon, and a vague squint at the timepiece for himself confirms it. Edward really has to go.

“...I know,” Jacob whispers, because Ned Wynert’s still in the room. As much as he trusts Ned, he’d also trusted the Rooks a good deal more than he does now, before the night some of them went after Edward for the crime of existing. If the wrong person found out the wrong thing from Ned...

Edward squeezes Jacob’s shoulder lightly, then turns to look at Ned himself. “Can you stay with him, lad?” he asks. “Doubt he should be alone right now.”

Ned looks between the two of them, then nods slowly. “I—yeah. I’ll stay.”

It’s worrying as hell, is what it is, seeing Jacob Frye so damn quiet. It’d be worrying as hell without the confirmation that he’d been right in the thick of the Alhambra’s last performance. Ned had suspected that beforehand, but he would’ve liked to be wrong, just this once.

Ned watches as Edward, the man who had practically appeared out of thin air a couple months back, gives Frye’s shoulder one last squeeze, ruffles his hair one more time, and then departs without another word. He looks over his shoulder once, fixing Ned with a pointed stare.

He takes that as his cue to move over and sit on the sofa next to Frye.

“You don’t owe me anything for this one,” Ned says quietly. Normally, that would rankle. But he’s got standards and he’s not going to hold needing comfort after the bullshit that tonight has been over Frye’s head.

Frye slowly nods, listing a bit to one side. Fortunately, he’s listing in Ned’s direction, so that ultimately works out.

“Whatever happened to... keeping people indebted to you?” he mumbles eventually.

“...Not for this, Frye,” Ned mutters back. “I’m not that heartless.”

“Right,” Frye says, slumping against Ned’s side. “Didn’t think you were. I just...”

He trails off, shaking his head.

Ned shifts a bit and gets an arm around Frye’s shoulders. Part of him wants to ask what the hell he did to piss Roth off as badly as he clearly did. The part of him that smooth-talks criminals into going along with what he wants reasons that’s a bad fucking idea.

“If you throw up on me, you are buying me a new suit,” he says instead.

Frye freezes, for a second, but he doesn’t pull away. Instead he makes an expression that’s probably supposed to be a smile—it misses the mark pretty badly—and says, “I’ll aim for the floor.”

“You’d better,” Ned replies.

He sits quietly for a moment, then says, “You’ve got beds here, right? Might be worth laying down before the drink wears off.”

The answer comes in the form of a vague nod, and then a hesitant, “First car, yeah.”

“Right.” Ned’s definitely not capable of carrying Jacob Frye anywhere, but he can probably keep him from toppling over. “Let’s head there, then.”

He stands, and holds a hand out to Jacob. The other man seems a little more steady on his feet than when Edward dragged him onto the train, but that doesn’t stop him from taking Ned’s hand and holding onto it like it’s the only thing keeping him from falling to his death.

Ned is definitely starting to get an idea of what the hell was going on between him and Roth, and he doesn’t like it one bit. He knows better than to comment on that, though. Instead, he leads Jacob into the first car, and steers him toward the narrow unmade bed that definitely belongs to him—the one with neatly laid blankets must be his sister’s.

As Jacob goes through nearly mechanical motions of shrugging off his coat, his eyes dart for a moment to the window. The sun’s beginning to rise outside, and before Jacob sits heavily enough on the end of the bed that it creaks under his weight, it almost looks like he’s glaring in its direction.

It is odd that Edward was insistent that he had to go, even though he clearly didn’t want to. Maybe the sunlight had something to do with that.

There are whispers, if you listen closely enough to the shadows, after all. Whispers about a society skulking around the edges of theirs. Ned tries not to listen too closely, but he’s still picked up a bit. And he wonders.

He doesn’t ask.

Instead he watches Jacob shrug out of his waistcoat and toss that on top of his coat. The movement tugs aside the collar of his shirt, just enough for Ned to make out a dark mark on his neck. And Ned has a very, very good guess of who left it there.

No wonder Frye was drinking so much, he thinks wryly as he sets his own hat off to the side.

“Starting to feel it now,” Jacob mutters, with another dark look in the general direction of the dawn.

“Makes sense,” Ned says. “Might wanna take your boots off, Frye,” he suggests, doing the same with his own shoes.

Jacob grunts an agreement and more or less throws them onto the pile.

Ned waits for Jacob to lay back, then shuffles in next to him, silently mourning how rumpled his suit’s going to be later. But, that’s easier to fix than leaving Jacob alone in the state he’s in might be.

“...I’m glad you got out of there,” he says in a rare moment of sentimentality.

Jacob freezes up, again, when he does that. Ned has a much better idea of why that is now.

“Not sure yet if I am,” Jacob mumbles, staring up at the roof of the train car with an incredibly forlorn look on his face. “Least he didn’t.”

“Life’s a lot more interesting with you around,” Ned says, being sure to keep his tone light. “I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

Jacob closes his eyes and says, quietly, “Right.”

“Pretty sure Edward would, too,” he adds, a little more cautiously.

“...Yeah. He would,” Jacob says.

Ned hums and nods a bit. “Get some sleep, Frye. I’ll stay.”

“I’ll try,” comes the exhausted reply. “Thanks, Wynert.”

That’s the last Ned hears out of him before his breathing slows, going deep and even enough that it’s safe to say he’s managed it.

It doesn’t take long before the motion of the train swaying beneath them lulls Ned off to sleep too.

Chapter Text

Evie prefers, generally, to have all of the information available before she comes to a decision. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible, but she’s considerably more willing to go on a little faith when it involves someone that she knows to be generally trustworthy and reliable. Such as, say, her fellow Assassin Henry Green.

With that said, there are limits, and he hadn’t explained very much before insisting she go with him to meet someone.

“Please tell me again,” she says, once she’s caught up to him, “where we are going.”

“I found a letter from the Prince Consort among Lucy Thorne’s research. Marked with the same insignia as your key.” Henry looks at her intently. “Dated 1847.”

Evie doesn’t follow. “1847?” she echoes.

“The same year the Prince began renovations to Buckingham Palace.”

Oh. She follows his logic now. “You think he added a vault for the Shroud!”

“And since there is no map of the palace with a room marked ‘secret vault’...”

Evie finds herself smiling as he turns away, walking a few more paces toward a well-dressed Indian man pretending to read a newspaper.

“Your Highness,” Henry says as he sets it down and stands to greet them, “may I present Miss Evie Frye. Miss Frye, Maharajah Duleep Singh.”

“A pleasure, Your Highness,” Evie says with a polite bow.

He nods to her, then turns toward Henry. “My friend,” he says, “the plans you asked for have been removed.”

Evie’s heart drops, and Henry’s expression suggests that his just did as well.

“Removed? By whom?” he asks.

“Crawford Starrick, or someone employed by him,” comes the answer, and Henry closes his eyes with a sigh, putting his hands on his hips.

The Maharajah gets a wry look in his eyes. “Yes, I thought you might recognize the name.” He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a sealed note, holding it out. “I know where they are, but it is heavily guarded.”

“That part will not be a problem,” Evie says, reaching in to take it. There’s no time to waste, and she rather doubts he’d like them to read that note in his presence, so she nods briefly to both the Maharajah and Henry and heads off.

“I thought not,” the Mahajarah says behind her. Before long, Evie hears Henry’s footsteps too, and slows briefly for him to catch up. But only briefly.

The location isn’t terribly far from the park, and while Henry lacks a rope launcher of his own (Evie wonders, suddenly, why he didn’t have one made for himself when he did for Edward), he is more than capable of climbing up buildings the old-fashioned way.

“We’re going to need a plan,” Evie says as they survey the area below them.

“I can provide a distraction for the guards while you find a safe way inside,” Henry says without missing a beat. When Evie turns toward him in surprise, the intensity of his gaze takes her breath away.

“Oh,” she says, softer than she’d intended to. “Really?”

He smiles at her. “For you, Evie, certainly.”

That... that certainly helps. Significantly, at that.

“Well,” she says eventually, “once I’m inside, I’ll find someone who knows where the papers are stored...”

Henry reaches over to lightly rest a hand on her shoulder. “And we will meet back on the train.”

He doesn’t wait for her to reply before he lowers his hand and turns away.

“Be careful,” Evie whispers at his retreating back.

The plan is, in essence, for Henry to cause as much confusion as is humanly possible without being pinned down, while Evie takes advantage to acquire those documents. His lighter-colored garb blends even better into smoke, so Evie doesn’t expect him to have any real trouble with all the tools at his disposal.

After checking every likely place she can think of, though, there is still no sign of anything like that. So Evie sighs and resigns herself to the fate of finding an isolated Templar to interrogate about their whereabouts. Most of them are in pairs, but she eventually locates one on his own, and it’s easy enough to creep up behind him and nab him so he can’t get away.

“I swear, miss,” he says as soon as his arm’s twisted behind his back, “I don’t know where they’ve taken him.”

Oh no. “Taken who?” Evie demands harshly.

“The man, dressed like you. The guards dragged him off...”

“Henry...” Evie breathes in sharply, and gives the Templar a shake. “The plans you stole. Where are they?”

“I don’t know anything about that!”

Securing those plans before Starrick can make use of them is... crucially important. Evie knows this.

Her father’s words echo in her mind, unbidden: Don’t allow personal feelings to compromise the mission.

...Without Henry, the mission is already compromised. She slits the Templar’s throat and is out the window before the body hits the floor, sprinting across the rooftops and trying to recall where she’d seen him last. When she’d seen him last.

She finally finds some clues near a pavilion; three dead guards, and a set of footprints that sink far enough into the ground to suggest their owner was carrying something heavy. An unconscious adult man, perhaps.

(Or a body of approximately the same size, but they wouldn’t have bothered to take a body. Would they have?)

As she begins to follow the tracks, she’s flagged down by a child calling her name. “Miss Frye!” It’s a small girl, and there’s a boy beside her as well.

“You’re some of Clara’s children,” she realizes.

“They took Mister Henry!” the girl says. “We couldn’t stop ‘em!”

“I bit one of them good, though!” the boy adds proudly.

“They dragged him off in a red carriage.” The girl points down the road at some tracks in the mud.

“They won’t get far, though. One wheel looked like it was about ready to fall off. You can see the cart tracks—it looks all wobbly-like.”

The children are right about the tracks, and that isn’t even the only sign once she starts looking properly. A cart run off the road, people knocked over, and a level of property destruction that would put her brother to shame all lead her directly to the currently three-wheeled carriage, parked haphazardly nearby.

No sign of Henry. Yet. But someone here must have seen what happened.

“I don’t know anything about that carriage,” says a woman in a brown dress, “but there’s been some strange happenings around here today. All kinds of unsavory types wandering around. Armed to the teeth. I don’t like it one bit.”

“Nor do I,” Evie agrees, and moves on. If she didn’t already have confirmation of Templar activity in the area, that would certainly have done it.

“Yeah, I saw them draggin’ someone out of the carriage after the wheel fell off. They said he’d hit his head,” says another merchant. “Not sure why they needed to take him to the church, but that’s where they went.”

Another witness account confirms it, as well as the location of said church, and a monk’s grumbling about a gate that’s supposed to be locked and isn’t leads her into (joy of joys) the sewers. The increasing Templar presence, at the very least, suggests that she is going the right way.

Eventually, she hears voices from up ahead. A quick blink reveals three of them, and an unmoving figure tied to a chair marked with gold. Henry.

“I dunno, we knocked him around pretty good,” one of the Templars is saying as she creeps closer. “Wouldn’t be surprised if it took a while...”

There’s three of them, all conveniently standing rather near a pallet of hanging barrels. Two are beneath it. One is pacing.

“Well, I hope you haven’t addled his brain,” another comments.

“He’s an Assassin!” protests the third, walking back over to join his friends. “How much more addled can he get?”

Aiming carefully, Evie throws her knife. It slices neatly through the rope holding the pallet up, sending it crashing down directly onto their heads before they can continue to slander the Brotherhood. She only pauses by the bodies long enough to be certain they’re dead, before rushing to Henry’s side. He stirs as she slices through the rope binding his hands behind his back, groaning softly.

“Evie,” he says as he catches sight of her. “They sent someone to move the architectural plans. Do you have them?”

No, she doesn’t. “Did they hurt you?” she asks instead of answering his question.

He’s quiet for several long moments.

“...I’m fine,” he murmurs.

No, he isn’t. But he is fine enough to stand, and Evie sincerely hopes he is fine enough to run for at least a short distance. She can fight well enough for both of them, she thinks.

“Let’s go,” she says softly. She only hesitates long enough to make sure that he can climb up out of the lower level alright, and then they’re both off at a run.

“What about the plans?” Henry calls after her. By some miracle, the Templars in front of her don’t hear him before Evie can assassinate both at once.

Only then does she reply, harsher than she meant to, “The plans are lost.”

“Evie, I’m sorry.”

She’s made her choice. To fail at it now would be infinitely worse. “Just concentrate on escaping, please!”

He doesn’t say anything further as they run out of the tunnels and up into a station. There’s a mix of Blighters and cross-wearing Templars there, but a handful of them are foolish enough to stand under another hanging pallet. A single knife from Evie ensures it’s the last mistake they ever make.

The others, she takes down with her cane sword and hidden blade—and when they become too numerous, she draws her gun, stealth be damned.

At last, they escape into an alley. Now that they are out of the sewers, Henry looks to be... in even worse shape than she feared. As if in response to the thoughts she hasn’t voiced, he grimaces, pressing a hand to his head.

“Get Miss Nightingale to look at that,” Evie orders, and he looks back to her immediately. “I must find the vault before Starrick secures the Shroud.”

Henry nods slowly, but matches her pace regardless. “We’ll talk to the Maharajah again.”

“I will talk to the Maharajah,” Evie corrects, stopping to turn toward him. “You will get your head looked at.”

“I’m sorry my capture has undone your plans,” Henry says, and there’s an undercurrent of something to his voice that Evie can’t place.

Whatever that is, she doesn’t think she likes it. “You’d be safer on the train,” she says sharply, turning away.

“Even if you find the vault,” Henry says behind her, “you can’t just walk into Buckingham Palace alone!”

“I won’t be alone!” she retorts. And then takes a breath, and then adds, “I’ll see you back at the train, Mister Green.”

There’s a pit in her stomach as she walks away. She doesn’t think she likes that, either.

In the end, Evie doesn’t make it back to the train until well after dawn, which is... unfortunate, but probably for the best, given that she’d rather not have to face Edward and tell him that she threw away a lead on the Shroud’s new location just yet. Henry isn’t there either, which she sincerely hopes means that he is either paying Miss Nightingale a visit or resting.

Evie hasn’t the slightest inkling of why, when she opens the door to the car that she and Jacob have been using as sleeping quarters, there are two people (largely clothed at a glance, thankfully) on his bed. She’d rather not know, actually, and so she only steals in long enough to liberate some bedding from her own and relocate to the sofa in the next car.

She doesn’t sleep well, when she manages to drift off. Which could be because she can’t stop dwelling on how badly she’d failed the night before, but more realistically is likely because they’d only made an attempt at lightproofing one of the train’s carriages.

Ultimately, she gives up on sleep long before night falls. This is only partially because she would rather not face Edward again until she has at least some idea of where the Shroud is within Buckingham Palace (if indeed it’s there at all) and partially because she would really rather not find out whether or not the individual sleeping with her brother was someone she’d otherwise know.

There’s work to do. There’s always more work to do. Jacob is at least somewhat more careful in playing at politics than he has been with... nearly anything else, including assassinating Philip Twopenny. The papers find something else to report on involving the Bank of England, but smuggling the stolen currency printing plates back inside keeps her brother’s mistakes from resulting in total economic collapse.

Evie’s starting to suspect that he’s avoiding her by the time he sets out to assassinate the Earl of Cardigan. She’s almost certain of it, by the time she’s waiting for him to return from that mission, and while she hasn’t heard of anything too catastrophic resulting from his actions there yet, it’s really only a matter of time.

(He isn’t the only one avoiding others, at the moment, admittedly. Evie’s started to do most of her work during the daytime again, because she’d rather have something more to show for her efforts than ‘the Piece of Eden might be inside Buckingham Palace somewhere,’ and if Henry—Mister Green—is waiting to pass messages along to Edward, then he isn’t getting himself knocked over the head and kidnapped again.)

The sun has long since set by the time her brother turns up again, which is honestly about what she expected. Jacob’s never been much for punctuality, and likely never will be. And, given some of the information regarding Starrick that’s come into her possession in his absence, that chafes much more than it usually does.

It’s the first time in some time, Edward suddenly realizes, that he has been on the train at the same time as both Frye twins. Though that realization takes a backseat to the sheer vitriol in Evie’s voice when she looks away from the nearly complete board of their targets, takes one look at her brother, and says, “You’re late.”

Jacob’s steps slow to a stop. He doesn’t say a word as Evie goes on, “Starrick is making his move. The Shroud of Eden is somewhere inside Buckingham Palace.”

“And? What’s that got to do with me?” Jacob asks over his shoulder. “You’ve made it perfectly clear what you think of my abilities.” He starts to walk away—

“Your handiwork across the city speaks for itself,” Evie snaps, and Jacob turns on his heel to glare at her.

“I’ve been killing Starrick’s henchmen,” he says, and there’s a flicker of pain in his eyes that Edward knows has to do with Roth, “what have you been doing? Let’s ask Henry, shall we?” Jacob says with a taunting smile.

It has been some time since he’s seen Evie and Henry near each other, Edward realizes, and he wonders just how much has been going on under his nose despite his best efforts to keep track of it all.

Evie’s shoulders stiffen, and she lifts her chin.

“I have been repairing your mistakes,” she says tightly. She starts to advance on him. “‘Too much haste is too little speed.’”

Jacob’s expression darkens, and he moves toward her as well. “Don’t you quote Father at me,” he growls.

“That’s Plato!” Evie counters as she gets closer. “And I am sorry this doesn’t involve anything else you can destroy. Father was right, he never approved of your methods!”

“Father is dead!” Jacob shouts in her face.

“Both of you, stop this!” Edward cuts in, in no small part because the pair of them look ready to come to blows.

Evie startles a little before protesting, “If my brother would think about his actions for once in his life—”

“Well,” Jacob retorts, “if my dear sister would stop acting like Father was God’s gift to man—”

“I expect better from both of you!” Edward shouts over them. “I expect better than for you to be doing the Templars’ work for them by driving the Assassins apart!”

Jacob’s eyes widen. Evie inhales sharply. And Edward is faced with the uncomfortable realization that the looks on both of their faces wouldn’t be out of place if he’d knifed them instead.

Despite that, he doesn’t take the words back, even as his heart, in spite of lacking a beat, aches at the matching hurt looks being directed his way. “This is meant to be a Brotherhood. You’d best start acting like it.”

The rear door opens.

“I,” Henry begins, eyes darting around the car. “I see this is... not a good time, but I have just received word from my spies. At the palace ball tomorrow night, Starrick plans to steal the Shroud of Eden and then eliminate all the heads of church and state.”

Well, shit.

Jacob swallows, then looks back at his sister. “Once more, for old time’s sake?” he asks through gritted teeth.

“And then we’re finished,” Evie hisses back at him.

“Agreed,” Jacob says darkly. “So what’s the plan?”

Evie turns, first, to Edward. “Can we rely on you for more than judgmental remarks, Mister Kenway?”

...She doesn’t say his name with any of the reverence she usually does. Normally, he’d be relieved that she finally let that go.

He doesn’t rise to her attempt at taunting him; there’s no time to coddle her hurt feelings—or Jacob’s—over being called to task about this.

“Aye,” he says. “I can keep any reinforcements from reaching Starrick from the outside, once the sun sets.”

Her expression darkens further, but she nods. “Good. Then we need a way into that ball... which will, of course, be heavily guarded and quite exclusive.”

“To members of Parliament,” Henry supplies, a little uncertainly, “as well as other prominent figures in the community... the Disraelis are almost certainly invited.”

“Ah, that settles it,” Evie says with an insincere smile to her brother. “Haven’t you become the very best of friends?”

Jacob’s answering smile is much more of a baring of teeth. “I take it you want me to bring them here?” he asks. “Or do you expect me to muck that up as well?”

“I’m sure even you can manage that without too much collateral damage,” Evie says sweetly. “Though the ideal amount, I certainly don’t have to remind you, would be zero.”

Neither of them are paying the slightest bit of attention to Edward now. Or to Henry, who gives him a silent but very alarmed look.

“Later,” Edward mouths to him, before looking back at the twins.

God, they’re so young. It’s hard to believe he was ever that young, though he knows he was. And even more stubborn, to boot.

“You’ll both need to blend in long enough to find Starrick,” he says loudly enough to catch their attention, making them both jump. “Your usual clothes won’t cut it.”

“...I can take care of that part,” Henry says. “Though smuggling weaponry inside will be much more difficult.”

“Freddy might be able to help,” Jacob suggests.

“I suppose he’s the most likely candidate,” Evie says.

“Good,” Edward says. “That’s sorted, then. I imagine you’ll have to handle most of that during daylight hours.”

She nods stiffly. “Your assistance will not be required.”

“Seeing as I can’t go out in the sun, that’s for the best,” Edward says dryly.

Evie opens her mouth, then closes it without a word. Eventually she says, “If you’ll excuse me,” makes for the nearest window, and departs the train through it.

Edward can’t say he’s that surprised that Henry makes his excuses and retreats toward the rear of the train immediately thereafter.

He doubts that Jacob is craving his company either, and he needs to hunt regardless. “See you later, lad,” he says, before departing himself.

Being on the receiving end of a reprimand from Edward Kenway fucking stings. Jacob won’t pretend otherwise, not even to himself.

But he doesn’t give them lightly. Or, clearly, just target Jacob with them. He may have been aiming more at Evie, actually, in retrospect. Either way, little as Jacob wants to admit it, he was probably right.

That doesn’t make figuring out how to fix this any easier. And Edward’s not on the train to ask.

Neither is anyone else who knows anything about where he’s gone off to, though Agnes comments about hearing shouting earlier and the fact that she apparently heard that from two cars away is honestly a little impressive. Which means that Jacob’s got to figure out where the hell in London he went the hard way.

Evie’s always been the better tracker, but Jacob wouldn’t be asking her for help right now even if she was around to ask—which she’s not—and he’s not bad at it himself, anyway.

He’s pretty sure the train was somewhere in Lambeth when Edward left, so that’s where he starts.

The fact that he picks up the man’s trail pretty close to the asylum (officially abandoned at this point, unofficially Jacob’s heard that’s a different story) feels like the universe is trying to tell him something. Not like it’s anything he doesn’t already know.

It’s not much of a surprise that he finds a Blighter dead in a pool of his own blood—a pool that’s definitely smaller than it ought to be for a man of his size.

Jacob remembers Edward making an offhand comment about trying not to kill while he’s actively drinking someone’s blood, so he can guess what happened here. Edward must’ve killed the man after the fact, judging by the knife wound in his chest.

He blinks, and focuses. A set of golden footprints appear on the ground, approaching the nearest wall before vanishing. Jacob uses his rope launcher to head up and takes a look around.

More golden footprints, leading up to the highest point of the roof, and a figure crouched there like a gargoyle. If he wasn’t outlined with that same gold, Jacob might actually think he was some kind of gargoyle.

(If vampires are actually a thing, could gargoyles be? ...He’s got bigger issues.)

Jacob takes a deep breath, then climbs up himself.

His boots scrape a little on the rooftop. Jacob cringes to himself. Edward shifts enough to look in his direction, and goes inhumanly still, motionless in a way that Jacob thought only statues could be.

It only lasts for a moment, and then Edward sighs heavily, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Wasn’t expecting to see you anytime soon, lad,” he says gruffly.

“Expecting Greenie instead?” Jacob jokes. Though it’s really only half a joke, because he sure can’t have been expecting Evie.

He lets out a soft huff, lips twitching upward in amusement. “I was halfway expecting some idiot Blighter come to pick a fight,” he says.

“Nah, not a Blighter. Just me.” Jacob gestures vaguely to the rooftop. “Mind if I sit?”

Surprise flickers across Edward’s face before he shakes his head. “Go ahead.”

Jacob sits. Eventually, he says, “You were right. We don’t need to be doing the Templars’ job for them. But I can’t... I don’t know how to fix this. Or where to even begin trying to, assuming it’d do... any good, anyhow, coming from me.”

Edward considers him seriously. “Why would it coming from you affect if it does any good or not?”

“I... that’s not... I don’t...”

Edward raises his eyebrows, clearly intending to wait him out.

“Because I’ve never been fucking good enough!” Jacob bursts out. “Not for Father, not for the Council, not even for Evie!”

Edward doesn’t look surprised by what he’s said. He looks almost... sad, actually, which is somehow worse.

“I wasn’t either, lad,” he says quietly. “Not that I ever knew your father, and there wasn’t a council back in my day, but what I’ve heard of this one hasn’t made me think anyone’s better off for having it. And if I’ve learned nothing else, Jacob, I’ve learned that there are people in this world it’s worth being good enough for, and people that it’s not. And knowing the difference isn’t easy, lad, it’s never been. But time makes it easier. Experience, too.”

Jacob’s cried more in the last few weeks than he has in the years beforehand, so he’s not that surprised to feel his eyes burning now, though he blinks hard to try and keep them from falling.

He opens his mouth to reply, but all he manages is a weak croak.

There’s a steadying hand on his shoulder, and Edward says, “Jacob. Would anything you’d done have been good enough for him? Anything at all?”

Hearing it put that bluntly is... Christ, a knife in his back would have hurt less.

“No,” he manages, and is not surprised at the harsh sob that escapes from his throat.

Instead of a knife in his back, there’s an arm around it.

“I was afraid of that,” Edward mutters, “but you’d know better than me.”

“I—I don’t understand,” Jacob says through his tears. His face is burning with shame, but he tucks it against Edward’s shoulder so the man can’t see that. “Why do you keep bothering with me? I just—I just fuck everything up.”

The situation with Roth alone is proof enough of that.

“You don’t, lad,” Edward says, more gently than he deserves. “You make mistakes, sure, but anyone who claims they haven’t is either lying or hasn’t made enough of them yet, but they will. Everyone does in the end.”

Jacob laughs humorlessly. “Making mistakes is all I seem to be good at,” he mutters, his voice thick.

“And I’m telling you, it’s not.” He says it like he’s certain of that, somehow.

He shakes with another sob. “How—how can you know that?”

“Because when I was younger, I thought the same thing about myself,” Edward says. “I made so many mistakes on my quest for fame and fortune. I got what I wanted, aye—and there wasn’t a man or woman I loved left standing beside me to share it with.”

Jacob... vaguely remembers him saying something about that, the night they first met. It might have even been the same phrasing, or something very similar.

Knowing Edward the way he does now, and having experienced what he has these last few months... Jacob thinks he understands now, why Edward quit being a pirate. Why he sometimes notices the man staring sadly into the night when he thinks no one is looking at him.

...Why he seems convinced that Jacob can be better than he is.

He’s never, in his life, had someone treat him as anything other than a failure for not being more like Evie. And he doesn’t know how to handle Edward not being the same.

“Some of them were willing to give me a chance to do better,” Edward continues, eventually. “Some weren’t. Too many never could.”

He shakes his head and goes on, “But more to the point, Jacob—you’re good with people, good at leading people, and good at thinking on your feet.”

When is the last time someone told him he was good at something? He honestly can’t remember. It’s been long enough that it’s hard to believe Edward at face value.

That’s... pretty fucked up, isn’t it?

“Doesn’t feel like it,” he mumbles against Edward’s shoulder.

“Lad, just about anyone can start a gang, but keeping it going and making it successful’s not something most people can do,” Edward says, patting him on the back.

The thing is, Jacob knows that Edward means well. That he means it as a compliment.

But his words just make Jacob’s brain drift back toward Roth, because he certainly had that level of success with the Blighters. And he can’t help flinching.

Edward stiffens beside him. And he says, “Jacob. Look at me.”

He doesn’t want to. But it’s the sort of tone that’s hard to argue with, so Jacob sits back, swiping at his eyes with the back of his hand as he does.

“You both had success there,” Edward says, looking at him intently. “But have you ever thought on why so many Blighters are willing to switch sides, and it rarely goes the other way?”

“...Oh,” he says in a small voice.

“He motivated others through fear,” Edward says. “That kind of control doesn’t last, but I don’t have to tell you that.”

Jacob takes a shuddering breath, and swipes at his eyes again. “Right.”

He looks away from Edward, gazing across the rooftops instead, and murmurs, “I’m surprised you keep putting up with my shit. Thought you’d have better things to do.”

“I don’t,” Edward says.

What the fuck is Jacob supposed to say to that? Eyes stinging, he looks down at his hands.

“...I wish we’d been able to meet sooner,” he eventually says.

When he risks a look back at Edward, he’s met with a nod.

“And I wish you’d had someone who saw you for who you are, and not their expectations for you, much sooner,” he says seriously.

“Yeah,” Jacob manages weakly. “I still... I still don’t know how to fix any of...”

He waves his hands, trying to encompass all of their issues. It’s why he went looking for Edward in the first place, and he really hopes the man has some ideas, because Jacob’s got nothing.

“Wanting to fix it’s a good start,” Edward says after a long moment.

“I guess,” Jacob mumbles. “No idea if Evie wants to...”

“I’d be surprised if she didn’t,” Edward replies. “Whether she’s aware of it, let alone willing to admit that at the moment...”

Jacob snorts. “You saw the look on her face.”

She’s probably still sulking over being reprimanded right alongside him. That hasn’t happened since they were kids.

“I did,” Edward says gravely.

“Didn’t feel great,” Jacob admits quietly. “But... you were right,” he says, because—yeah, it bears repeating.

“Your sister’s... stubborn,” Edward says, which is an understatement.

“Yeah?” Jacob laughs a bit. “Never would have noticed without you saying so.”

Edward chuckles softly. “Aye, I deserve that one,” he says, shaking his head. Then he leans back, resting his weight on his hands as he considers the sky above them. “I wish I had better advice for you, lad. For now... for now, get through tomorrow night. Stop Starrick from going through with his plan. And once she’s had some time to cool down... we can see about you two patching things up.”

“If we don’t get through tomorrow night,” Jacob says, “we’ll have much bigger problems.”

“...That we will,” Edward agrees, sighing deeply. “That we will.”

Chapter Text

To Evie’s mild surprise, preparations for infiltrating the ball at Buckingham Palace go... well. While the Disraelis can’t officially find them invitations, they are able to point Jacob in the right direction of where to acquire some unofficially. By some miracle, he manages to get those invitations—and a solution to getting their weaponry into the ball—without the whole of London knowing what he’s up to. Henry is able to secure clothing that won’t look terribly out of place, though Evie can’t say she is looking forward to wearing a dress for extended periods of time, and...

...Well, for all that she spent much too long on what could have been a wild goose chase, she was able to secure the location of the backup plans regarding the palace renovations thanks to the Maharajah. That will have to do until she can make it into Buckingham Palace to secure the plans themselves and find that vault.

That... isn’t all that she has found herself newly in possession of, thanks to that man. It is intensely troubling, when she thinks about it, to realize that she has learned more about her mother in the course of a carriage ride with a relative stranger than she ever had in the rest of her life. Even from—perhaps especially from—her father.

From what I understand, he was extraordinarily sad, broken even, after your mother’s passing. That kind of pain can blind us, can cause us to say outlandish things to protect the ones we love.

In retrospect, she doesn’t think that the Maharajah was only speaking of her parents with that remark. But Jacob hardly needs protecting, and in any case they won’t be speaking again once they’ve assassinated Starrick and secured the Shroud of Eden, and... that’s fine. She’s fine with that, really. Isn’t she?

(Henry—Mister Green—has been avoiding her, and she’s not certain when that began given that she had been largely avoiding him since the incident with the last set of renovation plans. She’s under no illusions about what side Mister Kenway has already chosen between herself and her brother; it won’t be hers, save for when working together against the Templars is absolutely necessary. But what sticks in her mind the most, despite her best efforts to the contrary, is the knowledge that after tonight, she might never see Jacob again. That’s... fine.)

She’s most surprised that Edward Kenway lets her wear the key to the Shroud as a necklace, handing it over when he meets her just after sunset, and while she waits for Jacob to join her. She’s already in the dress Henry procured, and she hates the thing. But she’s sacrificed her own comfort for the mission before. She’ll do it again.

The plan does involve him not entering Buckingham Palace at all. And she needs to secure the Shroud before Starrick can find it. But she would have expected him to give it to Jacob, given whose side he’s clearly taken.

That thought is pushed from her mind when a fancy carriage, fancier than any that the Rooks ever drive, begins to approach their agreed-upon meeting point. Jacob likely stole it from the Gladstones alongside their invitations.

“Of course he’d arrive in that,” Evie mutters as Edward melts into the shadows. For the best, given that he’s never interacted with Frederick Abberline directly, and the constable is the first one out of the carriage.

He’s dressed in the uniform of a Royal Guard, while Jacob is in a finer suit than anything he’s ever chosen for himself before.

“Miss Frye,” Abberline says, giving her a short nod of greeting.

Jacob meets her eyes for less than a full second before gesturing to Abberline. “Hand him your weapons,” he says. “We must enter unarmed.”

As if she isn’t well aware of that. Evie wordlessly gestures to the carpetbag beside her, which contains her hidden blade, gun, and kukri, as well as her preferred clothing.

She glances briefly at Jacob, then walks past him to climb into the carriage without a word. He follows her in, shuts the door, and the carriage jolts into motion. The last thing she sees of their allies is Frederick holding the bag, and a dark shape scaling one of the buildings behind him.

The silence in the carriage is stifling, broken only by the rattle of wheels over cobblestones, and the creaking of the carriage. Jacob’s bouncing his leg idly, fingers tapping against his knee, and it’s distracting to the point of irritation.

Evie opens her mouth to say... something, though she closes it without saying a word each and every time, numerous times on the carriage ride. But what would she even say? Does she even want to?

(Would it matter, if she did? After tonight, they’re finished. She might have said it, but Jacob agreed.)

The moment of truth arrives. Evie hands their invitations to Jacob, who in turn passes them to the guard at the gate—they’ll expect that from the man in the carriage, and the less attention they attract until they are in the ball, the better. The guard squints at the invitations, then peers around to look at Evie.

“Go on in, sir and madam,” he says at last, and Evie remembers to breathe. The carriage rolls inside.

And Evie hears, somewhere behind them, “What in the blazes is our carriage doing here?”

Definitely stolen from the Gladstones, then. Not that Evie needed the confirmation, but it’s nice to have, so long as it doesn’t cause trouble for her later.

And then Jacob finally breaks the silence to ask, of all things, “Did I hear something?”

“No. Just the voices in your own head,” Evie replies curtly.

A wounded look flashes over Jacob’s face, gone so quickly that Evie thinks she may have imagined it. He opens his mouth to reply, then closes it again as the carriage rolls to a stop.

He steps out without a word, and holds the door open for Evie to do the same. He doesn’t offer her a hand down, nor does he look at her face.

Evie steps down. She doesn’t look at him either. What matters right now is the mission. Nothing else. Not her feelings. Certainly not her brother’s.

The silence between them is... uncomfortable, putting it lightly, and Evie being the first to break it feels wrong. But someone must.

“I shall go and find the Shroud,” she informs him once they’ve made it to the ballroom.

“As you wish,” Jacob says in a hollow tone. “I’m off to meet Freddy,” he adds, with a lightness that is obviously forced.

He doesn’t wait for her to reply before rushing off.

She tears her gaze away from his retreating back—the mission is what matters—and surveys her surroundings. The plans, she knows, are located in the White Drawing Room. Which is most likely locked, and almost certainly heavily guarded. Both of which are solvable problems.

One cooperative guard and some rather literal arm-twisting later, she’s secured them. That goes... easily. Too easily. So perhaps she shouldn’t be surprised when she’s intercepted on the way to the vault by Mrs. Disraeli of all people.

(She supposes there are worse options to have caught her here.)

“There you are!”

Mrs. Disraeli... may have already been drinking, given the visible unsteadiness on her feet. Evie forces a smile and curtsies in greeting, and silently curses the fact that she hadn’t thought of stealing invitations without having involved this woman or her husband.

“I have someone,” she goes on, “I’m simply dying for you to meet.”

Evie’s suspicions of alcohol being involved immediately increase drastically.

“Uh,” she says intelligently.

“Shhh. Shh. Shh.” Mildly flabbergasted, Evie shushes as the other woman turns away and calls back, “Come with me!”

...She should probably see what this is about, or at minimum make sure that Mary Anne Disraeli doesn’t unwittingly doom all of London by blowing her cover. So Evie sighs quietly, and she goes. If nothing else, perhaps Jacob will have gotten their weaponry (and something better-suited to Assassin work than a dress) from Abberline.

She’s led over to a woman dressed in black, with a white veil covering her hair. There’s a small crown atop her head. Surely this can’t be...

“Your Majesty,” Mrs. Disraeli says, dropping into a deep curtsy as Evie’s heart lands somewhere around her stomach, “may I present Miss Evie Frye.”

Queen Victoria turns to look at her, arching an eyebrow as Mrs. Disraeli nudges Evie forward. She forces a smile, and curtsies as well as she can in the awful dress she’s still stuck in.

“You are the one responsible for Mister Gladstone’s... mishap?” the Queen says, and Evie’s heart drops even further. There’s something calculating in her gaze, something that sends a shiver down Evie’s spine.

“Your Majesty, I apologize, I—” she begins, and hopes that her trembling hands don’t catch the Queen’s notice.

The Queen’s gaze becomes less intense, less scrutinizing, and she says, “The cake is particularly good. Enjoy the ball.”

She turns and leaves without another word, and Evie nearly melts into a puddle with relief.

“I really must be going,” she says hastily to Mrs. Disraeli, and then hurries off before she can get in another word. She knows where the vault is, and while a glance around doesn’t reveal her brother anywhere nearby (typical) she can worry about that after she’s made it to the vault—

And then a gloved hand closes around her wrist, and the only reason she doesn’t immediately cut it off is because she’s unarmed. This does not stop her from turning a withering glare on... oh. Oh no.

“Miss Frye,” says Crawford Starrick, “may I have this dance?”

This... would be an opportunity to assassinate him, if she had her hidden blade, which she does not. Jacob wasn’t even able to wear his, and it would have been much easier for him to conceal it with longer sleeves. More to the point, it wouldn’t be a good opportunity to assassinate him if she had anything to do it with, given that they are... in the middle of the dance floor. She should have gone around, and taken a less direct route.

(She seriously considers attempting to strangle him anyway, because she knows Starrick is not a young man and she might be able to overpower him with the element of surprise.)

“Mister Starrick,” she says, barely keeping her voice even, “you’ve had your fun, but the game is over.”

She wrenches her hand free of his grip—except it’s stronger than she thought, and he pulls her back, and Evie barely resists the urge to revisit the strangulation plan.

“Ah-ah,” he tuts. “Listen. One, two, three.” He gestures to the roof of the palace, where Evie can make out the actual Royal Guard being replaced by those who must be Templars—ones who must have slipped past Mister Kenway, because while he is formidable, he’s still only one man—beginning to aim weapons down into the crowd. “One, two, three.”

He starts to lead her in the dance, and Evie has no choice but to follow along with him.

“Time is a wonderful thing, Miss Frye,” he says. “It heals all wounds.” When she glowers and says nothing, he continues, “We may make mistakes while dancing, but, the mazurka ends and then we begin again.”

If looks could kill, Starrick would be dead and buried, and she could be doing better things with her night than this. As it is, she currently has no choice but to trust that others can handle the Templars out there.

“Problem is,” he goes on, “everyone forgets. They trip on the same mistakes over and over.”

“People can learn,” Evie says.

The dance shifts around them. Starrick pulls her around to face him, and Evie seriously regrets not having found some other way to arm herself.

“Can they?” Starrick asks, as if it’s a question with a foregone conclusion. “Isn’t everyone around you repeating the same steps? But if one man could remember the dance? Could know the time? Then he could change things for the better.”

On another night—one not preceded by the last, and one where there was less at stake—Evie might have pointed out that to dance is about repeating the same steps, and that if he must force her to listen to his blatant Templar propaganda than he could at least come up with a slightly more fitting metaphor. But Evie left her patience back on the train.

She moves away. “I have had enough—”

Starrick intercepts her, again, pretending to hold her close. Evie couldn’t be more revolted. But he’ll lower his guard soon enough, and if he is here monologuing, he at least cannot be searching for the vault himself.

“This dance,” he says, “is nearly over. Soon, the people will forget the generation on this terrace, the ruin you nearly wrought on London. When this music ceases, Miss Frye, your time is up—and mine begins.”

Evie doesn’t think she has ever wanted to kill someone quite so much as she does now. But she continues the dance, and she looks for an opportunity, and she seethes.

Jacob manages to refrain from running through the party, barely, even as his instincts scream at him to get away from his sister’s harsh words and harsher stares.

The outfit he’s dressed in is not designed for climbing up the side of buildings and running across rooftops, not by a long shot. But, once he gets into a fairly-obscured corner, he manages to do just that (he thinks he hears the telltale sound of stitches popping in the suit jacket when he stretches his arm too far), and races toward where he’s supposed to meet up with Abberline.

“Freddy!” he says when he finds the man.

“Starrick peppered the regulars with his own men and took several guards hostage,” Freddy says without preamble. (Even Edward can’t stop them all on his own, Jacob supposes.) He gestures to the hiding spot and says, “Your weapons are in there.”

Jacob nods without a word and ducks inside. The suit jacket is indeed torn at the shoulder seam, so he ditches the thing and rolls up his shirtsleeves to make enough room for his bracer. He also switches the impractical dress shoes for his much sturdier boots, haphazardly shoving the fancy trousers into the tops of them. He’d rather change entirely, but there’s not time for that.

“Look,” Freddy instructs as Jacob emerges, nodding across the roof. Jacob does, and what he sees sends a prickle of dread down his spine. Men dressed as Royal Guards are pointing rifles down into the crowd below. They haven’t opened fire yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

“Right,” Jacob mutters. “I’ll kill the impostors and rescue the captives.”

“How?” Freddy demands. “It’s impossible to tell the difference.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Jacob says, before taking off across the rooftop.

He’d be pretty sure the snipers were impostors without checking, but he does check before going after them, and unsurprisingly every one of the ‘guards’ pointing guns at the crowd is outlined in red. They go down quickly—and quietly enough that even Evie couldn’t take issue to that.

...Ugh. He doesn’t want to think about his sister right now. But he finds himself glancing down at the party anyway, once he’s sure the people down there aren’t in immediate danger. Evie’s dress is distinctive, and she’s easy enough to find in it.

She is also, apparently, dancing. With Starrick, no less. He can’t see her expression very well from up here, but he’s willing to bet it’s murderous. How awkward that must be.

But since there’s no longer any guns trained on her or the other guests, at least that he can see, that’s no longer Jacob’s problem. “Now, to find the real Royal Guards,” he mutters to himself.

Given the size of Buckingham Palace, that’s easier said than done. But Jacob has Eagle Vision and the cover of night on his side. And, the real guards that he frees don’t seem overly inclined to get in his way, which is an added benefit.

It’s nice to be appreciated. But once he’s sure that all of Starrick’s impostors are dead—and there won’t be reinforcements coming with Edward on the job, they must have been in place before nightfall—it might be time to rescue his sister, who... won’t be appreciative.

She’s still stuck with Starrick when he makes it back to the party, but he doesn’t have to wait long for her gaze to dart back to the rooftops. He raises a hand, nods to her, and starts looking for a quick way down.

He doesn’t find one before watching his sister turn back and not hesitate to knee Crawford Starrick directly in the—ouch. Well, that’s one way to get away from him.

Starrick has the key to the vault. He must have taken it during their dance, because Evie knows she still had it on then.

And, as furious as Evie was with him for distracting her, she hadn’t even noticed. Starrick has the key to the vault, he already had the location, and now—because of Evie, because of her letting him get away with it—there is nothing standing between him and the Shroud of Eden.

There’s no time left to care about propriety. She doesn’t bother with making excuses. None of it will matter if Starrick succeeds. She needs to—to—

What she needs is to find her brother. He’s waiting for her just outside of the party, the same bag that she’d left with Abberline in hand. Jacob’s opening his mouth to say something. But there’s no time.

“Here. The location of the vault,” she interrupts, holding the papers she’d taken from the drawing room out for him to take it. “Go!”

“Just like that?” Jacob asks. “No plan?”

“No time for plans,” Evie says, because there isn’t. “I’ll catch up as soon as I’m rid of this infernal contraption.”

Slowly, he nods. And then, without another word, he takes off running.

And for the first time in her life, Evie Frye finds herself incredibly grateful for her brother’s impulsiveness.

...But there’s no time left for that. All that Evie can do now is change into her gear, as quickly as possible, and hope that Jacob won’t be too late because of her failing.

Jacob only glances down at the paper Evie handed him long enough to make sense of it. Then he takes off running, because if Evie is saying there’s no time for plans, then things must have really gone to shit.

There’s water between him and the vault, just deep enough to swim through, and Jacob doesn’t bother to mourn the suit he never liked anyway while he does just that. But, as he reaches the far bank, something explodes further in, through the trees.

Something explodes, loud enough for Edward and Henry to hear it from outside the walls. They meet each others’ eyes.

“Go,” Edward says intently. “I’ll cover you.”

Henry opens his mouth, closes it, and nods.

And Edward sets about proving himself enough of an irritation to the guards that Henry is able to slip inside without trouble. He’ll find his own way in soon enough.

There’s an open hole in the ground, revealing a staircase, just in front of whatever the hell exploded. The staircase is steep enough for Jacob to slide straight down it, though he’s likely going to be feeling that later. Right now, it doesn’t matter, because this is clearly the vault, and Starrick must already be inside.

Starrick didn’t really look like much from a physical standpoint—Jacob figured all of his success came from pulling strings in the shadows—but the man must have been moving fast to get all the way inside before Jacob could catch up. And, at the deepest part of the vault, there he is, a golden shimmery thing that can only be the Shroud of Eden already draped around his shoulders.

Jacob never put much stock in the tales about the Pieces of Eden. But he’s not enough of an idiot to not be concerned about the Grand Master of the Templars wearing something like that.

He sprints down the length of the final chamber, prepared to punch Starrick in the back of the head and stun him long enough to get the damn thing off of him—he remembers, from Edward talking, that the Shroud will heal him too quickly for a stab to be of any use—but Starrick turns and catches him by the throat, squeezing tightly enough that Jacob has to gasp for air.

“What are you doing?” he chokes out.

“Exploiting,” Starrick says coldly, forcing Jacob down onto his knees. “I warned you, my boy. But you do not listen.”

“Requiescat in pace,” Evie says to the infernal contraption that she certainly won’t be missing when all of this is over. And then she takes off in the same direction that Jacob had.

Getting to the vault is easy. Too easy.

And then she makes it inside, and she sees—at the other end of a long hallway—Jacob on the ground. Crawford Starrick, wearing the Shroud of Eden.

And his hands around her brother’s throat.

“Jacob!” Evie screams.

Starrick does something with the power of the Shroud. Whatever that something is, it causes the room to fill with what Evie can only describe as walls of golden light. They don’t span the entire width of the room, so she ought to be able to get around them, but it will take time that Jacob might not have. She wishes that she had the preternatural speed that Edward possesses.

“Jacob, resist him!” she yells.

She jumps down, dodging around the walls of light, and charging at Crawford Starrick. “You’re a monster!” she shouts at him.

He throws Jacob as if he weighs nothing at all, before her brother is blasted with the same sort of golden light, and sent flying across the room. He lands with a pained grunt, and does not rise.

Evie’s heart lurches in her chest. But she can’t... if she takes her eyes off of Starrick, she’ll meet with the same fate. She can’t help him or London if she’s dead. But she still hesitates longer than she should, at least until she hears a quiet groan from behind her, and that’s... that’s good enough.

“London will soon be rid of your chaos!” Starrick proclaims as she circles him, drawing his attention away from Jacob. “This city was a safe harbor, a light for all humanity. What alternatives do you propose? Bedlam?”

“The Shroud was never meant for you,” Evie hisses, and charges in.

“You would rather destroy the fabric of society,” Starrick counters. He’s able to block some of her strikes, but not all. She is faster than him, even with the Shroud, and that’s something she can use.

She overwhelms him, eventually. There’s a clasp holding the Shroud around his shoulders, and she makes to slice through it with a shout of, “Mister Starrick! You forgot to escort me home.”

...But the clasp isn’t so easily broken. Her hidden blade catches on the chain. In desperation, she drives it into his chest instead. The Shroud might be able to heal anything, but with her blade still in there, maybe...

Then Starrick meets her eyes, shoves her arm—and her hidden blade—back with considerably more strength than he’d had several minutes ago, and replies, “Let me rectify my mistake!”

The wound heals itself nearly instantaneously. Evie doesn’t even have the time to be horrified or to consider retreating before Starrick moves back in. There’s a hand crushing her throat, her feet are leaving the ground, and she can’t breathe—

Jacob spends a moment wondering if anyone caught the carriage that ran him over, before reality asserts itself once more and he slowly, painfully, picks himself up off the cold stone floor of the vault.

Evie’s in the same predicament that he was in. How long has he been out?

That matters less than pushing his aching limbs into motion, and going to rescue his sister.

“Another Frye to feed on!” Starrick is saying, which is just so fucked up that Jacob doesn’t even know where to begin, and besides, Starrick keeps talking as he’s choking Evie. “First you will fall, then the Queen! I will begin again. And this new London shall be even more magnificent.”

He throws Evie back as he sees Jacob running in. “I admire your pluck,” he taunts, “but there is little you can accomplish now. Like Jesus himself, I am immortal. Behold the power of the Shroud!”

“Jesus... wore it better...” Evie wheezes from behind him, and Jacob barely holds back a laugh as he charges in, plunging his hidden blade into Starrick’s chest.

Starrick just laughs, before shoving Jacob’s arm back and slamming him into the casket that the Shroud was in face-first. Seeing double, Jacob has no ability to stop Starrick from having a second go at choking him to death.

Evie hasn’t felt quite this terrible since the aftermath of her penultimate encounter with Lucy Thorne. But Lucy Thorne is dead, and she hasn’t been stabbed recently, and the memory of what just happened flooding back in is all the motivation she needs to pry herself up off the floor of the vault and charge back in. The vault’s defenses are even harder to evade this time, but she manages well enough—fast enough—that Starrick’s forced to throw Jacob aside and face her.

“London deserves a ruler who will remain vigilant, who will prevent the city from devolving into chaos,” Starrick proclaims.

Evie is much more careful about not giving him an opportunity to pin her down this time. She retorts, “Chaos that you are about to cause!”

He scoffs. “You two have generated quite enough on your own already!”

And... he isn’t wrong. Jacob has... no. No, Jacob hadn’t done anything that couldn’t be fixed. A far cry from what Starrick would do.

She barely leaps back in time to avoid him. “And we’ve mended it!”

“...We did?” Jacob says weakly.

Evie takes a deep breath and says, far more to him than to Starrick, “We did.”

She can’t risk looking back at him now. Not with Starrick right there, who seems profoundly unimpressed and would also take the smallest opportunity.

“No amount of planning or might shall beat me,” he taunts. “I have history on my side.”

Her hidden blade isn’t doing any good. But she has other weaponry. And even with the power on the Shroud on his side, Starrick can’t dodge gunfire at close range.

(It connects. But a shot through the heart doesn’t even slow him down.)

Jacob is still reeling a bit from Evie’s words as he picks himself up, groaning. And we’ve mended it!

It’s a far cry from what she’s been saying lately, and was saying, right up until they reached the vault.

The sound of gunfire draws his attention, and he focuses on the fight again in time to watch Starrick force Evie onto her knees. And even though the vault’s defenses are getting more and more annoying to dodge, Jacob runs in to try and distract him, if nothing else.

(Maybe they should have insisted that Edward find a way in, rather than keeping Starrick’s reinforcements away. Jacob’s beginning to wonder if they’re both going to die here, and all of this will be for nothing.)

Starrick only bothers to let go of Evie with one hand when Jacob gets close, and grabs him effortlessly.

“Get. Out. Of. My. City,” he demands, his grip tightening on Jacob’s throat—he’s likely doing the same to Evie, but there’s nothing he can do about it, when dark spots are dancing across his vision.

Jayadeep arrives in the vault to Crawford Starrick choking the life out of both Frye twins and wearing the Shroud of Eden, which is very close to a worst case scenario. But it isn’t a worst case scenario because neither of them are dead yet. Right now, Jayadeep is the only person who can stop that.

Whatever else he has become, however long it has been, he’s still an Assassin. His first strike, a thrown knife, only manages to hit Starrick in the shoulder. It’s enough to distract him. Enough for him to throw one of the people he’s choking aside like she’s nothing in favor of pulling the knife out.

Evie hits the ground and doesn’t move.

All thoughts of harrying Starrick from a distance vanish as Evie’s name tears itself clear from his throat. Jayadeep charges in, burying his hidden blade to its length in Starrick’s heart.

It’s a blow that should kill him. But the Shroud heals it. Of course. It also grants Starrick considerably more physical strength than Jayadeep thought he had, which is something he’s only aware of until his head connects with the floor of the vault and, for a brief time, he knows nothing but pain. Then nothing at all.

When Edward finally makes it into the blasted vault, what he’s greeted with is not an encouraging sight.

Starrick is unmistakably wearing the Shroud. Both Evie and Henry are sprawled on the ground, breathing but otherwise not moving. And Jacob is trying to fight the man on his own, and clearly losing. Badly, at that. It doesn’t stop him from saying, “Starrick, your reign is nearly over!”

The Templar Grand Master responds by backhanding Jacob hard enough to make the lad stagger, then grabs him by the throat.

“It has barely begun,” Starrick snarls.

Evie and Henry are both starting to pick themselves up. So Edward focuses on Jacob, using every bit of Celerity he has to charge in. He distantly hears Evie’s surprised gasp as he rushes past—to her, he must be little more than a blur. He crashes into Starrick’s side, forcing him to let Jacob go as he slams into the Shroud’s casket.

There’s a crunch of bone. Starrick hisses as the Shroud, of course, instantly repairs the damage Edward’s inflicted.

“You must be the mystery Assassin,” Starrick growls, shoving him hard enough that Edward stumbles back a few steps.

“Aye,” he agrees, “I am.” If Starrick doesn’t know who he is, he’s not going to bother enlightening the man now.

But he remembers, too late, that the Shroud can steal vitality from the people around the wearer. Which is the last thought he gets to have before he’s sent flying by a punch to his chest. Edward manages to twist in midair and land on his feet, but it’s only thanks to his supernatural reflexes.

...Supernatural reflexes that Starrick now has access to.

Well, shit.

Starrick... pauses, his brow furrowing as he looks at his hands. And he says, the words almost contemplative, “What are you?”

Henry looks like he’s recovering faster, he’s closer than the others, and he’s behind Starrick. If Starrick’s focused on Edward already, then maybe he can use that. Maybe Henry can, too.

The Masquerade, right now, is the least of Edward’s concerns. They’re going to kill Starrick here and now, or... well, die trying, and it won’t be his problem if he meets Final Death. And revealing what he is ought to keep Starrick’s attention for at least a few moments longer.

So, he bares his fangs at the Grand Master of the Templar Order.

Starrick stares. His mouth falls open, as Henry silently picks himself up off the floor of the vault. He continues to stare, the horror that only someone who didn’t believe Kindred existed and has just been provided with strong evidence to the contrary can possess written all over his face.

Eventually, he demands, “What form of new devilry is—”

And then Henry interrupts Starrick by stabbing him in the back. “Edward, now!”

Edward is fast, inhumanly so. But right now, with the Shroud empowering him, so is Starrick.

Before Edward gets a chance to run in, Starrick turns, uses his currently-inhuman dexterity to pull the knife from his own back, and plunges it into Henry’s side. Then he picks the man up by the throat and throws him.

Edward sees red. The Beast snarls, and it takes everything he has not to let it have its way. The only reason he doesn’t is because he’ll become a danger to the Assassins in the room as much as Starrick himself. Wrestling the Beast back into control costs him precious seconds, however, and Starrick is upon him. He can’t be choked the way a human can, but it’s hardly a pleasant feeling to have the man’s fingers wrapping around his neck.

“I don’t know what you are,” Starrick says in a low, angry voice, “but I will purge you from my city alongside these meddling children.”

He throws Edward across the room in the same direction he threw Henry, and colliding with the wall is enough to stun even him.

Evie feels awful. On numerous levels, at that. But Edward and... Henry, apparently, have Starrick occupied at the moment, so instead of rushing back into the fight, she darts over to where her brother is groaning.

“I’m sorry,” she says, because there have been too many times in the past several minutes that she thought she wouldn’t have a chance to, and she offers him a hand up. “Let’s not die tonight.”

Jacob freezes, staring up at her with incredibly wide eyes. Guilt coils further around her heart—what has she done?—but before either of them can say anything more, there’s a snarl from Starrick’s direction. Henry is... back on the ground and not moving, and before Evie can begin to process that, Starrick’s thrown Edward into the wall, too.

She’s shaken out of just staring by her brother taking her hand. Almost automatically, she pulls him to his feet.

“We need to take him on together,” Jacob says roughly. “The Shroud’s got to go.”

“He’s stronger,” Evie agrees, “but if we can overwhelm him enough to get it off...”

No other words are exchanged between them after that. For once, no other words need to be.

Jacob reaches Starrick first, more cautious than she’d honestly thought he could be, because while he taunts Starrick with a shout of, “Die, old man!” he’s careful, so careful, to avoid being pinned down.

“After you,” Starrick replies, and surges forward—faster than he should be able to move—

But Jacob’s ready for him, or at the very least he’s ready enough. He darts backward, mockingly tipping his hat, just in time for Evie to take his place.

“The Shroud will not protect you!” Evie shouts.

“You’re—” Starrick begins, and then is abruptly cut off by Evie punching him square in the nose. He decides to stop attempting to monologue, after that.

Like this, Starrick moves fast—too fast—but it’s too fast for him as well. For all his talk of dancing earlier, of people making mistakes, with the implication of course that a man like Starrick would be above making those same mistakes... Starrick isn’t used to being so fast, or so strong.

Naturally, the consequences of failure now are much worse. But Starrick is more predictable, easier to counter, than he ever had been before.

Evie’s ready for him.

...No. She and Jacob are.

The Shroud can protect Crawford Starrick from injury. It cannot, however, save him from stumbling over a loose section of tile as he’s fighting them off. It’s the opening they’ve needed this whole time. That neither of them could have taken advantage of alone.

“Jacob!” Evie shouts, and he moves in without hesitation, pinning him down against the Shroud’s casket with his kukri.

Starrick breaks free of Jacob’s grip almost immediately, of course. But he’s so focused on her brother that he doesn’t notice Evie slipping the Shroud over his head—perhaps in much the same way he’d slipped the key over hers—until it’s gone. They throw Starrick back—he doesn’t fly nearly as far, given that he first has to tumble over the edge of the casket, and neither of them are superhumanly strong—before rounding the casket themselves.

As Starrick struggles to pick himself up, no longer possessed of the power of the Shroud, Evie glances at her brother with a smirk. “Shall we?”

Jacob grins widely. “Let’s.”

As one, they charge at Crawford Starrick, each plunging their hidden blade into his chest and forcing him down to the ground. The world begins to fade out around them, as it often does when taking out a target. But this time, Jacob is there right beside her.

“London will perish without me!” Starrick claims.

“You flatter yourself,” Jacob scoffs.

“I would have created a paradise.”

“The city belongs to the people,” Evie says, leaning over him to add in a lower voice, “You are but one man.”

Furiously, he shouts, “I am at the very top of the Order!”

And that outburst seems to have taken the very last of his strength. Jacob crouches beside him, already readying his handkerchief.

“You were, Mister Starrick,” Jacob says as he dies. “You were.”

Evie produces a handkerchief as well, and they each swipe it through Starrick’s blood.

The world fades in again. Jacob looks at Evie with a sad smile.

“Shame we won’t be partners anymore,” he says softly.

Her heart breaking slightly, Evie asks, “It’s for the best, isn’t it?”

Jacob won’t quite meet her eyes. “Are you gonna wear the Shroud and run London?”

She looks at it, laying on the ground. Now, the Shroud of Eden looks like a harmless piece of fabric. Evie knows better.

“Whatever it gives, it takes from someone else,” she says as she looks up again. “You’d continue to age without me. You’d become like Father.”

Jacob laughs under his breath, looking down at his feet. “A fate worse than death!” he proclaims as he looks back up.

“Will you wear it?”

“After you sorted out the boroughs? The chaos I caused?” Jacob shakes his head. “I couldn’t compete.”

“Jacob Frye stepping back?” Evie raises her eyebrows. “Who’s blackmailing you? Is it George?” she teases.

“He wouldn’t dare,” Jacob counters. The small smile on his face fades, and he looks Evie in the eyes, and he says in a more serious tone, “I’ve missed you.”

“...Me too,” she admits. “Would it be possible to continue where we left off?”

“I’d love nothing more,” says Jacob.

“I’m starting to think Father didn’t know everything about... everything,” Evie says with a breathy chuckle.

The look that Jacob gives her in response to that might genuinely be the happiest she’s seen him in months, if not years. And it makes her think that maybe, just maybe, tonight has turned out for the best after all.

Jayadeep has faced death before, but never quite like this. He was to be executed, and it hadn’t felt real that he was still alive until weeks after his arrival in England instead. For all that his skills as an Assassin were lacking, he’s been strangely fortunate through the years in that the worst injuries he’s suffered were all relatively minor, and typically nothing he could not sleep off. A concussion, some bruises, a sprain here and there.

His chest feels strangely tight, his heart beating frantically as if it’s trying to escape. Breathing has only grown more difficult, and he’s never in his life felt so... tired.

The sounds of fighting have stopped, at least. He hopes that means Starrick has been defeated. What he’s far more afraid of is the opposite.

“Damn it, lad,” a voice mutters above him. It takes too long to place it as belonging to Edward Kenway. “Stay with me.”

“Did we...” Jayadeep stumbles over his words. “Is Starrick...”

“Aye,” Edward says quietly. “He’s dead.”

Jayadeep breathes a sigh of relief, then winces. “Evie... and Jacob...?”

Edward nods. “They’re—”

“Oh my God, Henry!” That’s Evie’s voice, and she sounds horrified.

Two sets of footsteps rush over, and then the Frye twins are kneeling at his side.

He truly must look terrible. Still, he manages to meet Evie’s eyes, and he asks, very quietly, “Did I... did I jeopardize the mission?”

Evie inhales sharply, and shakes her head. “Henry, you saved it,” she says, her voice wavering.

“Ah,” he says. “Good. That... I am glad of it.”

Perhaps in another life, this could have happened differently. But to have finally rid the city of Starrick, Jayadeep could make his peace with falling here. Evie is alright. Jacob is alright. Edward is alright.

But if he is to die—and he knows in his bones that he will not be leaving this vault again, not in his condition—he would at least have them know...

“Jayadeep,” he whispers. The name leaves his lips for the first time in nine long years, and he closes his eyes for... only a moment, when it does.

“No, no, don’t you dare fall asleep, Greenie,” Jacob hisses, though he sounds far away despite the way he’s gripping Jayadeep’s forearm.

“The Shroud,” Edward says, and Evie gasps.

“Jayadeep Mir,” he says, louder this time. “That was... that was my name. Please, remember me. Don’t... don’t waste...”

It’s becoming harder and harder to speak. Much harder to focus, but he tries to on Evie’s face. He would have liked to get to know her better, before the end. At least she’ll know who he was.

“Save your final words for another time, lad,” Edward says, as something gold enters Jayadeep’s field of vision. “Also, I’m sorry about this,” he says after draping the golden fabric—the Shroud?—around his shoulders.

It’s the only warning he gets before his own knife is pulled from between his ribs, making him cry out involuntarily.

The knife hurts much more coming out than it did going in, but Jacob hasn’t let go of his arm and he realizes, dimly, that Evie’s interlaced her fingers with his.

“You’ll be alright,” she murmurs. “Please be alright...”

The pain’s still too much. He whispers an apology, and then it overwhelms him.

Henry’s—Jayadeep’s—eyes fall shut. The Shroud can’t have been too late, it shouldn’t have been too late.

“No, no,” Evie says desperately, gripping his hand tighter. “Please, no...”

Edward seems significantly more calm, and Evie doesn’t understand how that can be the case if Jayadeep is dying—

And then he takes her other hand, and guides her fingers to the inside of Jayadeep’s wrist. She can feel his pulse, and it’s not weak and fluttering. It’s strong and even.

“Give it a moment, lass,” he says gently.

“...He probably just—just passed out from the pain,” Jacob offers, though he sounds about as shaken as Evie feels.

Evie does her best to remember how to breathe. He will be fine, the Shroud just... needs time to work. That’s all.

(But what if it doesn’t? What if it isn’t enough? What if Starrick overused it while fighting them, and he’ll never wake up, and—)

“...Evie?”

She could almost cry from relief. “Don’t scare me like that again,” she says, voice cracking, as Jayadeep’s eyes open. Her sight blurs, and she realizes that she is crying, actually.

“I will... endeavor not to,” Jayadeep says, his eyes shining. “How long was I...”

“Just a minute or two,” says Jacob. It seemed like... so much longer than that.

Edward slowly helps him into a sitting position, and Evie doesn’t think she’s mistaking the relief on his face.

“Good to have you back with us,” he says, patting Jayadeep on the shoulder.

Jayadeep slowly nods. “I... I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to presume...”

“We want you here, Jayadeep,” Evie says firmly, giving his hand a squeeze. “I want you here.”

And then she decides to do something that the Evie of a day ago—or even just the Evie of a few hours ago—would have never even considered. Something incredibly impulsive, by her own standards or by her brother’s. But neither of those Evies had come so close to losing him forever.

She kisses him.

Jayadeep makes a noise of pure surprise, but he kisses her back, to sounds of exaggerated disgust from Jacob and booming laughter from Edward.

Evie also decides to ignore them both.

Chapter Text

They return the Shroud to its proper place before leaving the vault.

It’s nearing sunrise, so Edward takes his leave immediately. This is likely for the best, because Frederick Abberline finds Evie, Jacob, and Jayadeep less than five minutes later, and tells them to be back at Buckingham Palace at noon.

It would be hard to explain why Edward literally can’t do that. The three Assassins capable of acting during the day don’t mention him to Sergeant Abberline. And, after agreeing to the mysterious summons, they’re allowed to depart as well.

“...All in favor,” Evie says once he’s out of earshot, “of sleeping until then?”

Taking down Crawford Starrick once and for all was... exhausting. It would have been if it hadn’t quite literally taken all night, or if the Shroud of Eden hadn’t been inextricably involved to an even more exhausting degree. Granted, Jayadeep would certainly have died if it wasn’t for the Shroud.

(Strangely, following some realizations involving him that perhaps were a long time coming, Evie feels like she’s never understood her father better.)

As it turns out, Jayadeep takes little persuasion to be talked into joining them at the train. Which may be in part because all three of them are exhausted, and in part because...

...Well. Neither she nor Jayadeep have put a name to this new thing between them, because apart from a rather nice kiss and the comparatively much less nice emotional distress at the possibility of losing him forever, there isn’t very much to it. Yet. Evie likes it, whatever it might become, all the same.

Personally, Evie doubts that she’s the only one who would have preferred to sleep much longer after that. But some rest is better than no rest, particularly after such a night.

And so, shortly before noon—Evie doesn’t miss the longing look her brother shoots the train as they’re leaving it, and she sympathizes immensely—the three of them return to Buckingham Palace, deeply uncertain of what to expect.

What Evie certainly did not expect was for Frederick Abberline to be driving a carriage with the royal coat of arms on it. She’s even less prepared for Queen Victoria herself to be standing there, when he opens the door.

Abberline hands her down from the carriage, and Evie bows—it isn’t as if her usual clothes are designed for a curtsy.

“Your Majesty,” she says.

“Miss Frye,” she replies, and Evie is vaguely aware of her brother choking on air to her right.

“You’ve met before?” he asks in an incredulous whisper.

“Didn’t I mention?” she whispers back, smirking faintly.

They rapidly return their attention to the Queen when she begins to speak again. “Mister Abberline informs me that you three are responsible for saving my life. Is this true?”

“...It is, Your Majesty,” Jayadeep replies.

“Evie Frye, step forward.”

The way the Queen is looking at her sends shivers down Evie’s spine, just as it did last night. She complies all the same, after a brief glance at her companions.

“And you,” the Queen says to Jacob.

“My brother, ma’am,” Evie volunteers. “Jacob Frye.” Then she gestures to Jayadeep, and makes a decision. “And this is Mister Henry Green.”

There’s something grateful in Jayadeep’s expression when he meets her eyes, and he nods slightly as he steps forward.

“Mister Frye. Mister Green.” The Queen considers them for a long moment, then says, “Kneel.”

They exchange a baffled glance between the three of them, then do just that as the attendant from the Queen’s carriage brings forth a clearly-ceremonial sword. She lightly touches it to each of their shoulders, right and then left, and they share disbelieving looks.

“Arise,” Queen Victoria instructs. “I invest you all in the Order of the Sacred Garter.”

Evie manages to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth in order to reply, “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“If you are as adept as Mister Abberline implies, I may call on you.”

Jacob says, “Sergeant Abberline tends to exaggerate, Your Majesty.”

That gets the faintest smile from her. “We shall meet again,” she says. “And Miss Frye?”

Evie’s heart leaps into her throat. “Ma’am?”

“Should you want it, I saved you some cake.” She offers Evie a secretive smile, to which Evie can only chuckle.

She’s handed back into her carriage, the attendant follows, and Fredrick Abberline climbs back onto the driver’s bench. Jacob waves to him, and he briefly tips his hat before setting off.

“Father would be proud of you,” Evie says as she walks over to Jacob, resting a hand on his shoulder.

“Hm.” He considers that for a moment, watching the carriage leave. Then he turns to her. “Dame Evie Frye.”

What a strange feeling that is. Evie chuckles a bit, rolls her shoulders, and says, “Sir Jacob Frye.”

Jacob laughs, and then turns to her with a challenging grin. “Race you to the train.”

“You’re on!”

They take off running, and the sound of Jayadeep’s baffled laughter follows them.

The first order of business once they all reach the train, of course, is getting more sleep. Because—unexpected adrenaline from meeting (again) with the Queen of England aside—that was altogether not enough rest for anyone, not after the night they’ve had.

It’s very nearly sunset by the time Evie feels functional enough to attempt extricating herself from Jayadeep’s arms. The attempt is... not altogether a successful one, but both of them are largely awake before Jacob. The three of them are sitting around the train, wondering what in God’s name to do with themselves now, when Edward more or less saunters in for the evening, at which point the most immediate order of business becomes filling him in on what he had missed.

Evie would be offended that hearing that they’ve been knighted makes Edward laugh so hard he almost cries if she hadn’t been just as baffled. If she wasn’t still just as baffled.

(And no one else seemed to be quite as unsettled by the Queen’s presence, Evie has rapidly realized, as she was. This could mean nothing. It likely does mean nothing. She’ll be careful, all the same.)

It takes several nights, after Starrick is defeated, for Edward Kenway to work up the courage to visit his daughter’s grave.

He had realized, to his dismay, that he could not remember what her favorite flower was, or if she’d even had one. Evie, at least, is familiar enough with the language of flowers to help him put together something appropriate: cardamine, cypress sprigs, purple hyacinths, and Michaelmas daisy. Paternal error, mourning, and apology. Farewell.

The graveyard is otherwise deserted as he kneels in front of the grave. It’s a simple thing, but well-kept. Jennifer Scott. 1713 – 1805. Edward lays the bouquet on the ground in front of it and clears his throat.

“Hello, Jenny,” he says, barely above a whisper. “It’s been some time.”

He takes a shaky breath that he doesn’t need, and continues, “I should have come as soon as... as soon as Beckett told me you were buried in London. I suppose I was too much of a coward to do it sooner. I wish I’d been there for you. I wish I’d seen Birch for what he truly was sooner. Maybe things would have been different, if I had.”

Edward closes his eyes. “I was a horrible father to you,” he says, and the words are over a hundred years too late. “I never should have prioritized Haytham over you the way I did. You were older, aye, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t need me. I was too blinded by the idea of raising my son to join the Assassins to realize that. Too blinded by society’s expectations to offer you the same choice.”

He opens his eyes again, his gaze tracing over the letters of her name. “The Assassins’ goal is freedom, but I denied you that, and by the time I realized that... you were already gone. You had lived your whole life with hardships you never should have faced because I couldn’t be there to protect you.

“It’s far too late to say it now, but I’m sorry,” Edward says. “I’m so sorry, Jenny.” His voice cracks, and he isn’t surprised to feel the bloody tears beginning to fall.

“I’m leaving London,” he tells the headstone. It’s the first time he’s spoken it aloud, though he wouldn’t be surprised if the Frye twins and Jayadeep know of his plans all the same. “I know you and your brother were never close, and part of that was my doing. I reckon you knew he was buried in America. I doubt you visited his grave, and I can’t blame you for that. But I... I need to say goodbye to him as well. I’ll be back, sooner or later. Lord knows I can’t leave the Frye twins alone for too long.”

Edward manages a weak chuckle, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. “You would have liked them, I think. You were just as much of a rebellious scamp, before Haytham was born. I think they may have rekindled that love of adventure in you. I wish you could have met them. I wish they could have met you. But some things... some things aren’t meant to be.”

He lifts his gaze from the headstone, looking up at the night sky. “I don’t know if there’s an afterlife. Given what I am, it doesn’t seem impossible. But wherever you are, I hope you’re at peace, and safe from my foolish mistakes.”

Edward looks back at the stone, reaches out to lay a hand on it, fingers brushing over Jenny’s name. “I love you. Goodbye, Jenny.”

He wipes his eyes one more time, then rises, and takes his leave from the graveyard.

All three of the younger Assassins are waiting for him when Edward returns to the train. Evie’s got a folded piece of paper in hand, something that she holds out to him without hesitation or meeting his eyes.

“What’s this?” he asks.

“The location of...” Evie hesitates, which only confirms his growing fears about what she’s going to say. “...Haytham’s grave.”

“How did you find this?” he asks as he accepts the paper. His voice sounds hollow to his own ears.

“We haven’t been in much contact with the American Brotherhood historically,” Jayadeep says quietly, “but I found a copy of his son’s journal. He had written of it there.”

“Right,” Edward mutters. He braces himself for a moment before unfolding the paper.

St. Paul’s Chapel, New York City, New York.

He stares at it wordlessly, for several long moments, before he clears his throat. “I suppose I need a way to get to New York, then.”

Evie nods without a word.

“You’re... really leaving, then,” Jacob says.

Edward looks up at him, taking in the despondent look on his face. “Not forever, lad,” he says softly. “But the reason I even agreed to become Kindred in the first place was to be there to protect my children.”

He closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again. “It’s too late for that. This,” he waves the paper in his hand, “is... the only thing left that I can do.”

“You’re coming back? I thought—” Evie shakes her head. “I don’t... know what I thought.”

Jayadeep clears his throat and says, “The Council doesn’t know about your involvement under any name. They won’t find out about you from us.”

“We... thought that would be best,” Evie says, a little uncertainly.

“Aye, it probably is,” Edward agrees. He manages a bit of a smile. “And it isn’t as if I can leave you three unsupervised for too long, can I?” he adds. The teasing probably falls a little flat, but it’s either this or crying more bloody tears.

He’d really rather not do the latter.

“What, Greenie doesn’t count as supervision?” Jacob jokes. It falls a little flat too.

“I say this with immense affection,” Evie says, smiling at Jayadeep. “No.”

Jayadeep rolls his eyes, but it does nothing to shift the besotted look he’s giving Evie.

Edward chuckles quietly, then folds the note up and tucks it into his coat. More seriously, he says, “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Evie says softly, the smile falling from her face. “I don’t know if... any of us... would still be here without you.”

“You were getting by alright without me before you two found me,” Edward replies, shrugging.

Jacob winces, hard. “Less than you think. Something was going to give, sooner or later.”

Edward looks between the three of them. “You’re all skilled Assassins,” he says. “I’m glad to have helped, but I don’t think you would have needed me.”

“Maybe not,” Jayadeep says. “But you were here, and we are all glad of it.”

Edward nods slowly. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas about how to get to New York without the sun being an issue?” he asks with a strained smile. “The sooner I leave, the sooner I’ll be on my way back.”

Jacob speaks up first. “You remember Wynert? He’s originally from around there, I think, and he’s... good at not asking questions, when it matters.”

That’s a very valuable skill to have in a mortal, when one has to maintain the Masquerade.

“Aye, I remember,” he says. “Good idea, lad.”

Jacob ducks his head in a hasty nod. Opens his mouth without a word, then shuts it again, and—nearly fast enough that if Edward didn’t know better, he’d think that Jacob picked up some supernatural speed he shouldn’t have—he lurches forward and pulls him into a tight hug.

Edward finds himself slightly less surprised when Evie’s arms are also around him moments later—he holds them both close, and wonders how he got lucky enough to meet them.

Jayadeep hangs back a little, looking hesitant. It’s a hesitance Edward recognizes for what it is now—and to his continued surprise, before he can say a word about it, Jayadeep approaches to join.

He’s changed. They all have changed. The three of them have grown, so much, from who they were when he met them, and Edward couldn’t be more proud.

Crossing the Atlantic wasn’t the easiest of endeavors before the sun became an issue, though it’s a surprise to find that technology has advanced so much that ships can make the crossing in little over a week—back in Edward’s day, the fastest ships would be sailing for a month.

It’s a much less pleasant surprise to find that this is because, for the most part, sailing ships like the Jackdaw are a relic of a bygone era. Edward certainly feels like one himself. But passage to America on a steamship with no questions asked is the best he could hope for, and so he keeps his complaints to a minimum around Ned Wynert. The lad likely thinks Edward’s strange enough as is, considering his reaction to being informed of how long the voyage would be—but he was willing to help Edward stow away with enough information on the back-and-forth route the ship in question takes between England and New York that, assuming he’s discreet enough, returning won’t be difficult.

And, for the most part, Edward is discreet—in a worst case scenario, he could always lash himself to the underside of the ship’s hull, but that is a last resort both because it would be incredibly uncomfortable and because it would make feeding during the journey much more difficult. But he perhaps isn’t as discreet as he should be, because even if the ship is nearly as new and foreign to him as the train had been, it remains a ship.

Edward hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the ocean. How much it still calls to him, even now. How much, over a century later, it still feels like home.

While the steamship’s crew does begin to suspect that something is amiss by the final night, they aren’t suspicious enough for it to become a problem. On the next night, the steamship is docked in the harbor of New York City. Edward had never visited it in the daylight, and now...

It might have been smarter to wait before going looking for the grave of his son. To make sure that he has somewhere safe to sleep the day away, and start his search on the following evening. But now that he’s here... the thought of waiting even one night more isn’t pleasant. So he doesn’t.

Half the night goes by before Edward finds St. Paul’s Chapel. Locating a single grave in the attached cemetery goes faster. A part of him almost wishes it wouldn’t. But he finds that, too.

Haytham E. Kenway. 4 December 1725 – 16 September 1781.

Time has been less kind to Haytham’s grave than it was to Jenny’s. But he’d passed away some twenty years before her. Someone’s visited his grave more recently than they had Jenny, and Edward has a sneaking suspicion as to where the allegiance of those who did might lie given the damnable line etched into the stone beneath his name and the years of his life.

May the Father of Understanding guide him.

It was one thing to be told that his son had become a Templar. It’s another entirely to see the proof of it set into his headstone.

“Hello, Haytham,” Edward says to the grave of a boy who’d grown up to become a Grand Master. The last he’d seen of him, moments before falling into torpor, his son had been terrified, and Edward had been for him. When Edward awoke, at long last, he’d feared that Haytham might have met with the same fate—something that he couldn’t have survived.

The news he’d received instead...

“...I wish I’d seen Birch for what he truly was sooner,” he says at last. “Much sooner. Jenny did, and I was a fool for not listening to her when I had the chance. Instead...”

Instead, he’d found out too late. He’d faltered at the worst time he possibly could have. And his family had paid the price, time and time again.

“I remember you as a boy,” he says softly. “A boy I’d hoped, one day, might stand beside me as an Assassin—and that, if you didn’t choose that life for yourself, you would still have the skills to protect yourself from the Templars. I never dreamed that you would...”

There are so many things that he could say. None of them adequate.

“History remembers you,” Edward says at last, “and not at all for what I hoped you might be for. I should have been there for you. Instead, you had only Birch. If I couldn’t see him for who he was, what hope did you have? You were only a boy.”

It’s been over a century. Edward wasn’t aware of any of that time passing, not until it was over. When he closes his eyes, he can only picture his son’s terrified face. The last he’d ever see of him.

“You grew up without me,” he murmurs. His vision is blurring with red when he opens his eyes, but those damnable words—May the Father of Understanding guide him—remain the same. “And I know too well what you grew up to become. How many of my friends and allies—how many of my brothers did you kill yourself? How many more died because of you?”

The gravestone does not answer, but Edward knows at least one for certain—Adéwalé, who must have known who his father was—and suspects many, many more. Perhaps more than he’ll ever know, even if he spends the rest of his nights searching.

“...I’m disappointed in what you became, aye,” Edward goes on, as his view of Haytham’s grave continues to redden. “The worst part of it isn’t that, though knowing you had a hand in undoing so much of what I worked for is terrible. The worst of it is knowing that... had I been just a little faster, a little smarter, you could have been spared the fate you had. Jenny, too.”

(Before he’d accepted the Embrace, he’d seen what he thought to be a vision of his own death. He’d been staked instead, dead to the world until Evie and Jayadeep stumbled across him on the trail he’d left behind. Maybe that had been what he’d seen all along, or maybe he would’ve died that night if he hadn’t.)

Edward exhales slowly, something he still doesn’t need. He wipes his eyes clean of the bloody tears filling them, at least for a little while.

And he says, “It’s much too late now for apologies, I know, but I’m sorry I wasn’t there, more than anything. I love you, son. I hope you’ve found peace.”

He reaches out, resting his hand on the top of the stone, and bows his head. He remembers, for the last time, the boy his son had been. And he lets that final image of him go.

“Goodbye, Haytham,” Edward says. He stands, and he turns away—

—and he freezes. Behind him, a pair of red eyes burn bright in the darkness. They belong to the largest wolf Edward has ever seen. His first thought is Beckett, impossibly, but his eyes don’t glow in the shape of a wolf—and Edward has seen Beckett’s wolf form before.

“I know what you are,” Edward says slowly. “Kindred.”

The wolf briefly tilts their head to one side, considering him. The light from their eyes dims, and they begin to change. The form of a wolf melts away, leaving a man standing there instead. He must have been around Edward’s age, when he was Embraced, or possibly a little older. His dark hair is tied back in a similar style to Edward’s own. His eyes are a dark brown, too, now that they aren’t glowing any longer. And his face looks familiar, strangely so, almost like...

...No.

Edward inhales sharply.

“Hello, Connor,” he says to his grandson. His voice comes out more level than he expected it to. “I was under the impression that you had passed some time ago.”

Connor raises an eyebrow. “I could say the same for you.”

Edward hadn’t heard him approach. He couldn’t say how much Connor had heard, other than enough.

He chuckles humorlessly. “A Templar got lucky, and I spent one hundred and thirty-three years in torpor.”

A second silent eyebrow goes up to join the first. Connor’s gaze flickers briefly to the gravestone, then back to Edward.

“My sire sought a challenge,” Connor replies after a long pause. “He did not ask if I wanted this.”

“...Ah,” Edward says. “I’ve heard that’s common with Gangrel.”

Which would explain how he was, initially, an enormous wolf, as Protean is not common outside their clan.

“It is,” Connor says. “He regretted it.”

“Good,” Edward says vehemently.

Connor’s gaze darts once again to the gravestone of the Templar who was his father, and Edward’s son.

“Did you intend to be here tonight?” he asks.

Edward looks at the grave.

He realizes what the date must be, and staggers slightly—which is likely answer enough for Connor, but he still shakes his head.

“No,” he says roughly.

“...I visit every year,” Connor says, still not looking at him.

Edward’s voice fails him, and he nods mutely.

Only then does Connor look back. And he goes on, in a quieter voice, “I have his journal. He wrote of you.”

Edward honestly thinks he would have preferred being staked again.

“I doubt they were particularly flattering things,” he says, in a tone that... does not manage to hide any of the emotional turmoil he’s feeling.

To his immense surprise, Connor shakes his head. “He respected you. He wrote near the end that you were the only person who had never lied to him. That he hoped to preserve that tradition with me.”

Connor pauses before he adds, “He did not.”

“...I wish I could say that surprised me,” Edward says quietly.

There’s silence between them, for a time. Connor breaks it first.

“I only know of you from what others have said,” he says. “Who are you?”

How does he even begin to answer that?

“I’m an Assassin, I suppose,” he says after giving it some thought. “Certainly not a pirate anymore.”

Connor slowly nods. “I... suppose I am too.”

“It’s... strange, knowing I’m not the last Kenway left,” Edward says after a long moment. “Though I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting the name for yourself.”

Connor shakes his head with a huff that could be amused. “I rarely even call myself Connor, these nights.”

“What do you call yourself, then?”

He goes very still for a moment. And then he says, very slowly, “Ratonhnhaké:ton.”

“Ratonhnhaké:ton,” Edward repeats.

He immediately knows he didn’t get it quite right, and winces slightly.

Ratonhnhaké:ton is... much more patient with repeating his own name until Edward does get it right than he would have been, in his shoes.

“Good,” he says at last. And then he glances over his shoulder, frowns, and goes on, “Dawn approaches. I’m... glad to have met you, Edward.”

“Aye, and I’m glad to have met you, lad.” Edward glances at the slowly-lightening sky, hesitates a moment, then asks, somewhat impulsively, “Would you like to visit London with me?”

Ratonhnhaké:ton openly stares, before he says, “Why do you ask?”

“Well...” Edward says slowly. “I... would like the chance to know you better,” he admits. “But, also,” he continues, grinning, “the look on Evie’s face would be hilarious.”

He considers this. “I could be convinced. Who is Evie?”

“One of the Assassins who, ah, freed me from torpor,” Edward explains. “She and Jayadeep found me in the basement of my old home. I... still don’t know how I wound up there.”

There isn’t much time left until daybreak. But there’s time enough to give Ratonhnhaké:ton a brief account of the three young Assassins who freed London from Templar tyranny, and while Edward doesn’t know him very well—yet—he’s gotten the feeling that his grandson is nothing if not direct. If he wasn’t at least considering it, he would say so.

He hopes he’ll take him up on it, at least for a short while. Edward will understand if he’d rather not—the logistics of getting two Kindred back across the Atlantic Ocean might more difficult than just the one, even with the power of steamships he grudgingly acknowledges—but the look on Evie’s face would be the highlight of the night if not the month.

More than that, though—it would be nice to have everyone left that he cares about in one place, if only for a short time. That list is... much shorter than it was before his torpor. But much longer than he would have expected it to become so soon after.

Daysleep claims him, buried in the earth not far from St. Paul’s Chapel. And for the first time in a long time, Edward Kenway drifts off wearing a small smile.