‘Where’s the hidden laboratory?’ she asked him. The men she’d just fought were taking their time to die. Gurgles, death rattles and the sound of boots scrabbling at the brick in a final feeble burst of life were the background to their conversation.
‘Untie me, and then we can parlay, my lady,’ bargained the trussed-up prisoner.
Evie climbed astride the man and pulled her fist back. His face twisted into a mixture of fear and indecision. He had seen the blade in action. He had seen Evie in action. He had no desire to be on the receiving end of either. This was a man who had been lulled into a false sense of security by a pretty face many times before and wasn’t about to let it happen again.
‘I’m pressed for time,’ she said, just in case her intentions weren’t already clear. ‘Tell me now.’
‘It’s underground,’ he swallowed, inclining his chin towards what looked like a panel of some kind in the wall of the roundhouse. ‘It requires a key. One of the guards nicked mine, cheeky sod.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and stood, about to leave.
‘Now untie me.’
She shook her head. ‘You got yourself in. I trust you can get yourself out.’
He was still calling out after her as she left. ‘Not to worry, my lady, I can still recall a couple of tricks from my carnival days.’
Good luck to you then, she thought, as she departed by a different door, now looking for another guard who might have the key.
Thank God for the flapping mouths of Templar guards. She pressed herself into the shadows of a passageway, overhearing two of them discussing the very key she sought.
‘What are you doing? Keep that key in your pocket, or else Miss Thorne will have your guts for garters.’
‘Let’s have a butcher’s downstairs then. I want to see that artefact.’
So do I, thought Evie Frye, as she claimed another victim and recovered the key.
She returned to the roundhouse, deciding to release the prisoner if and when the key worked on the panel, but too late – he was absent, chair overturned and ropes discarded on the floor. She tensed in case he was planning to leap out at her but, no, he was gone. Instead she turned her attention to the panels and was at last able to let herself into the building’s inner sanctum.
Inside, the walls were dark and wet. They muffled the sound of the storm and yet somehow, here, it felt as though the elements were at their fiercest.
How could that be? She remembered the lightning rod and thought of power being directed down here. Power needed for an underground laboratory, perhaps?
And then she came upon it. And she knew she was right – that she stood at the very epicentre of the storm’s channelled energy.
And that the artefact was close.
62
The flagstones stretched away from where she stood at the door, opening out to a large vaulted underground space where scientific apparatus on tables lay between Tesla coils and upright lightning conductors – all throbbing with a steadily intensifying energy.
Too much? In the roof of the laboratory hung a series of harnesses and platforms. Lightning particles seemed to crack all around them, sparking and flashing, painting the room a sudden glare of phosphorescent white.
At the other end of the laboratory was what looked like a large inspection tube and in there, she could see, was the artefact. Standing nearby was Sir David Brewster with an assistant, both poring over what lay on the other side of the toughened glass, the orb-like golden Apple. Even from so far away, Evie found herself transfixed by it. Years and years of research into the Pieces of Eden and now here before her was a real one.
Evie stood close by the doorway, but even though she was lit by the sudden lightning flashes, the men were too absorbed in their work to see her. She crept forward, still hypnotized by the sight of the Apple but able to eavesdrop on Brewster and his assistant now.
‘By Jove, under blue light it goes completely transparent!’ exclaimed the scientist.
Brewster was nothing like the man he had been before: weak and small within the dark shadow of Lucy Thorne. Now he was a man in his own domain, in command once again, and feeling confident enough to throw a few jibes Thorne’s way. ‘The cheek of that woman,’ he shouted over the buzzing of the lightning conductors, the hissing of the Tesla coils, the rhythmic huffing of automated bellows. ‘I say, I ought to seize the blasted artefact for Edinburgh.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying, that would be an exceptionally bad idea,’ retorted his companion.
‘Why? It’s God’s apple, not hers. I’d display it in public. Darwin would be vanquished. Banished in shame to the blasted Galapagos to roost with his beloved finches.’
‘Miss Thorne would have your head, and Mr Starrick the rest,’ said his colleague.
‘You know, Reynolds, it might just be worth the risk!’ exclaimed Brewster.
‘Sir David, you cannot be serious.’
‘Just a wee joke, Reynolds. Once we unlock the artefact’s secret the Templars’ grip on London will be fixed. The Assassins will fall, and Darwin will be little more than a bearded memory.’
As she drew closer, coming out into the open now where the two men could easily see her, she could see the Apple glowing. Brighter now. Lit by an increasingly heavy shower of sparks.
It was time to make it hers.
She engaged her blade and struck, and saw the assistant slide off her blood-streaked steel before Brewster was even alerted to her presence. His eyes went to his dead companion and then back to Evie Frye, looking at her agog, his brain trying to make sense of this sudden unexplained appearance.
And then, Evie leapt and killed him.
‘It is time to lay down your head, Sir David Brewster,’ she said, letting him to the floor.
‘But I have so much more to discover.’
His eyelids flickered. His breathing ragged now.
‘Do not be afraid,’ she told him.
‘I am not. God will protect me.’
‘I will continue your experiments,’ she said, and saw it clearly, the path that lay before her. She would carry on with the learning that had begun in her father’s library at Crawley. She would make it her mission to locate the artefacts, to harness their power and use them for the benefit of mankind. A wind of good fortune, not ill.
‘You cannot stop Starrick,’ said Brewster, his head on her knees as she knelt with him. ‘Miss Thorne has already found another Piece of Eden, more powerful than the last.’
‘I will take that one too,’ said Evie, never more sure of anything in her whole life.
‘We fight to gain what we cannot take with us,’ said Brewster. ‘It is in our nature.’
And then he died. Evie took out her handkerchief and, in a ritual passed down by her father – one he said was a homage to Altaïr’s own feather ceremony – touched it to Brewster’s wound, soaking it with his blood. She folded the handkerchief and secreted it inside her jacket.
In the same moment everything seemed to happen at once: guards, three of them, came rushing into the laboratory.
Evie stood, already engaging her blade and ready for battle, just as there came a sudden increase in electrical intensity, and the artefact seemed to bulge with a fresh influx of power – and then exploded.
Evie was immediately below the inspection glass and protected by the plinth on which it stood. The guards, however, were not so lucky. They were peppered with flying fragments and seemed to disappear in a fog of blood-mist and debris as beams, harnesses and platforms came tumbling down upon them from above. Evie scrambled t
o her feet and ran for the door, just as the chain reaction began, lightning conductors bursting into flame, machinery exploding with a flat whump.
And then she was outside, grateful to be joining those who were sprinting away from the factory as a series of explosions tore it apart.
63
‘What was that explosion?’
She had met Jacob back at the rail yard as arranged. He too looked as though he had seen plenty of action in the meantime. Both were blooded now.
‘The Piece of Eden detonated and took the lab with it,’ explained Evie, finishing her tale.
Jacob curled a lip. ‘That magic lump of hyperbolic metal? I’m shocked.’
She rolled her eyes. All those nights reading to him. Imparting that knowledge to him. They really, truly had been for absolutely nothing.
‘Simply because you have never valued the Pieces does not –’
An old argument was about to resurface until the appearance of George Westhouse. ‘All went according to plan?’ said the elder Assassin sardonically.
‘There was a slight … complication,’ replied Evie, shamefaced.
‘The lab exploded,’ said Jacob with an eyebrow arched at his twin sister. You want somebody to blame; there she is.
‘You derailed a train,’ George Westhouse reminded him.
‘Oh he did, did he?’ said Evie.
Jacob shrugged. ‘Well, the train derailed and I happened to be on it. I killed my target.’
So, Rupert Ferris, of Ferris Ironworks, an organization that as well as being in Templar hands employed child labour, was dead.
‘Brewster is also no more,’ said Evie.
‘Then, all in all, a successful mission, in spite of you two,’ said George.
‘What about London?’ said Jacob. Evie glanced at her brother. For her the events of the evening had been an epiphany, a signpost for the way forward. Was the same true of Jacob?
‘What about it?’ asked George cautiously.
‘We are wasting time out here,’ said Jacob, indicating the rail yard around them and the suburbs. The city of London was close – yet so far out of reach.
‘You know as well as I do that London has been the domain of the Templars for the last hundred years. They are far too strong yet. Patience.’
Ethan thought differently, remembered George, seeing his friend’s belief alive and well and living on with the twins.
‘But the Templars have found a new Piece of Eden,’ said Evie.
George shrugged. ‘Sir David is dead; they do not know how to use it. The Council shall guide us; sound advice that your father would have seconded. I shall see you back in Crawley.’
The twins watched George leave with sinking and somewhat resentful hearts. Fires that burned bright had been comprehensively doused by George and his invocation of the Council. What they both knew, of course, was that their father would certainly not have agreed with the remote Assassin elders. And what they both also knew was that they had no intention of abiding by either George Westhouse or the blamed Council.
A train clattered slowly past and blew its whistle.
‘What’s stopping us?’ said Jacob, nodding at it. ‘London is waiting to be liberated. Forget Crawley.’
‘Father would have wanted us to listen …’
‘Oh, Father. You could continue his legacy in London.’
‘Freeing future generations from a city ruled by Templars. You know, Jacob Frye, you might just be right.’
‘Then, shall we?’
‘Yes, let’s.’
With that, the two of them ran and boarded the train bound for London.
There, they would meet Henry Green, ‘the Assassin watching over London.’
They knew nothing of his true history.
64
After what had happened at the Metropolitan line, The Ghost had stayed in the Thames Tunnel for over a year.
There he had continued to provide a reassuring presence for the other tunnel dwellers, though in truth he did little but act as a figurehead. Most of the year was spent sitting or lying in his alcove, grieving for Maggie and for the other innocent lives lost in the failure of the operation to retrieve the Piece of Eden. He cursed the age-old hunt for trinkets, scorning Assassins and Templars and their obsessions with baubles.
Ethan had come to him in the tunnel, but The Ghost had dismissed his old mentor. He had no desire to see Ethan Frye.
George came too, and explained that the Brotherhood needed a man in the city. ‘Another undercover operation if you like, Jayadeep. Something more suited to your talents.’
The Ghost had chuckled at that. Hadn’t Ethan Frye said the very same thing to him all those years ago in Amritsar? Something more suited for his talents. Look how that had turned out.
‘You would be required simply to establish an identity as a cover, full stop,’ George had said. ‘There’s no infiltration involved. Quite the reverse. We want your cover to be just tight enough to avoid detection but not so tight that you can’t begin to assemble a network of spies and informants. You are to be a receptacle, Jayadeep, a gatherer of information, nothing more. You have a way about you.’ George had indicated along the tunnel. ‘People trust you. People believe in you.’
The Ghost raised his head from where his arms were crossed over his knees. ‘I am not a leader, Mr Westhouse.’
George hunkered down, grimacing as his old bones complained but wanting to sit with Jayadeep, an unknowing echo of a time when, in The Darkness, Ethan had done the same thing.
‘You won’t be a leader, not in the traditional sense,’ said George. ‘You will be required to inspire people, just as we know you can already do. The Brotherhood needs you, Jayadeep. We needed you before and we need you now.’
‘I failed the Brotherhood before.’
George gave a short impatient snort. ‘Oh, do stop wallowing, man. You’re no more to blame than Ethan, or myself, or a Council that seems intent on allowing the enemy to rise unchecked. Please, do me this one favour. Will you at least think about it?’
The Ghost had shaken his head. ‘I am needed here in the tunnel more than in any war.’
‘This tunnel will shortly cease to exist,’ George told him. ‘Not like this, anyway. It’s been bought by the East London Railway Company. Look around you, there’s nobody here. There are no more pedestrians, no more traders to serve them, and none but the most desperate come here to sleep. There’s just you and a few drunks sleeping it off until they can go home to their wives and tell lies about being robbed of their wages. They did need you once, you’re right. But they don’t need you any more. You want to offer your services to your fellow man, then devote yourself to the creed.’
The Ghost had deferred. He had continued to brood until, as the months wore on, he was visited again.
And it was strange, because The Ghost had spent so many nights in this very tunnel dreaming of them and dreaming of home that when his mother and father appeared to him he assumed that this too was a dream, that he was having an awake-dream, hallucinating the image of Arbaaz and Pyara standing there before him.
It had been a matter of five years or so, and they were just as luminous as he remembered, and around them the dingy darkness of the tunnel seemed to fall away, as if they created their own light, standing in front of him clad in the silken garments of the Indian Brotherhood, the chain that ran from the phul at his mother’s nose to her ear glimmering in the soft orange light of a lantern. No wonder he thought he was dreaming at first. Their appearance was ethereal and other-worldly. A memory made
flesh.
The Ghost sensed other figures hanging back in the darkness and could make out George and Ethan. No then – not a dream – and he scrambled to his feet, hands reaching out to the wet tunnel wall to steady himself, the dizziness of suddenly standing, the weakness he felt, having languished so long, the emotion of seeing his mother and father again, making him wobble unsteadily, knees buckling, and his father stepped forward to support him. Ethan too, and then the four Assassins led Jayadeep out of the tunnel. Out of the darkness.
65
His mother and father had taken temporary apartments in Berkeley Square. There, The Ghost slept in a bed for the first time in as long as he could remember; he ate well and he received his mother’s kisses, each one like a blessing.
Meanwhile, between The Ghost and his father hung poisoned air. Was Arbaaz one of those who had arrested Jayadeep and flung him into The Darkness? What had Arbaaz done – or not done – about the death sentence pronounced on his son?
The questions were never asked. No answers offered. Doubt and suspicion remained. So naturally The Ghost gravitated towards his mother, who became a conduit between the elder Assassins and the recalcitrant younger one. It was she who told him he would not be returning to Amritsar. Not now. Maybe not ever. His appearance there would pose too many questions, and anyway the needs of the Brotherhood were best served if he remained in London.
The Ghost had sensed the hand of Ethan Frye and George Westhouse behind these decisions, but he knew his mother agreed that the Mir’s very presence in London was a risk and taking Jayadeep home an unconscionable magnification of it.
He considered leaving of course. But he was still an Assassin, and you can’t turn your back on a belief. The Ghost had seen the artefact’s terrifying potential and knew it should be retrieved. Having previously failed did nothing to change that.
One day, during that honey-coated period at Berkeley Square, his mother had invited The Ghost for a walk, just her and him. They trod streets thronging with Londoners who goggled at his mother as though she were not merely from another country but belonged to a different species altogether. Her robes were silk but otherwise unadorned and in stark contrast to the crinolines, whalebone corsetry, unwieldy hats and fussy parasols of the indigenous population. And for all that none could touch his mother for her beauty. He had never been more proud of her than he was at that moment.
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