Assassin's Creed: Underworld (26 page)

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.

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.

‘You are aware, I think, of the course of
action that Mr Westhouse and Mr Frye favour?’ she said as they walked. Her arms hung
loosely at her sides, shoulders thrust back, chin proud, meeting every stare with the same
dignity.

‘They want me to be something I’m
not, Mother.’

‘They want you to be something you most
definitely
are
,’ she insisted. ‘A credit to the Brotherhood.’

He forgot his pride for a moment, head hanging in
remembrance. ‘No, I was not that, and fear I never will be.’

‘Ah, hush,’ she chided him.
‘What a load of rubbish. Did we raise you to welcome defeat with open arms? Do I look into
your eyes and see nothing but surrender? I fear you will exhaust my patience if you’re to
continue being quite so self-pitying.’

‘Self-pitying? Really? You think me
self-pitying?’

She inclined her head with a
smile. ‘Maybe a little, sweetheart, yes. Just a touch.’

He thought about that. Then said tartly, ‘I
see.’

They continued their promenade, heading a little
off the beaten track now, towards the less salubrious areas of town.

‘I’ve hurt your feelings,’ she
said.

‘Nobody likes to think of themselves as a
sulky child,’ he admitted.

‘You are never that, and making this
journey to see you, I’ve found my child has grown into a man.’

He gave a derisive snort. ‘Some man.
Incapable of completing his blooding.’

‘There you go again …’

‘Sorry, Mother.’

They had made their way through winding side
streets into Whitechapel, until they found themselves in front of a shop, where his mother
stopped, turned and reached to take her son’s face in her hands. ‘You’re so
much taller than me now.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘You see? You’re a man now. A man
ready to shed the childish conceits of self-admonishment, guilt, shame, whatever other poisonous
emotions crowding that head of yours, and take up the next phase of your destiny.’

‘Is it what you wish?’

She dropped her hands and half turned away with a
laugh. ‘Ah, now you’re asking, Jayadeep. Dear, sweet Jayadeep, grown inside of me,
brought into the world and nursed by me. What mother dreams of her son growing up a
killer?’

‘An Assassin, Mother.
A great Assassin, not a great killer.’

‘You can be a great Assassin without being
a great killer, Jayadeep. It’s what I hope for you now. It’s why we are here. For
now you have reconciled yourself to your new life; I welcome you to it.’

She was indicating the shop in front of which
they stood. His eyes went to it, a grimy window crowded with dusty knick-knacks, bric-a-brac and
gewgaws.

‘A curio shop?’ he said to her.

‘Just the right thing for an enquiring mind
such as yours,’ she told him.

‘I’m to be a shopkeeper,’ he
said flatly.

‘Let’s go inside, shall
we?’

She produced a key from within her robes and
moments later they stepped into the crowded but somehow comforting surroundings of the shop.
Inside it seemed to stretch back a long way into spectral and mysterious depths, and when they
closed the door they were cut off from the sounds of the street outside. Dust danced in shafts
of light that leaked through dirty windows obscured by piled-high trinkets. Shelves heaved and
bulged with a variety of goods that were little more than indistinct twilight shapes. He liked
it at once.

But even so – a shop.

‘I believe it was Napoleon who said that
England was a nation of shopkeepers,’ smiled his mother. She could see he was intrigued,
and that he liked the premises too much to simply dismiss them out of hand. ‘How fitting,
then, to become a shopkeeper.’

They made their way along a narrow passageway
between
shelves that groaned with every conceivable ornament. Here was one
crammed with dusty books, another that seemed in danger of simply collapsing beneath the weight
of the china piled on to it. He saw pressed flowers under glass and found he was still able to
name them, thanks to memories of his mother in Amritsar. She saw him looking, and they shared a
glance, and he wondered how carefully these items had been chosen and placed. After all, his
mother had evidently been here before. As they passed along a narrow passageway she indicated
more things she thought might be of interest to him: a tray of clockwork components that excited
him on sight, taking him back to more barely remembered hours as a child, when he had pored over
broken clocks and clockwork toys. Not far away a bureau groaned beneath the weight of a
multitude of crystal balls, as though the shop had been visited by a gang of hard-up fortune
tellers, and he recalled having been fascinated by them as a child.

She led him to the back of the shop where she
drew across a thick floor-to-ceiling curtain, ushering him into a workroom beyond, picking up a
herbarium that she handed to him. ‘Here. It’s something of a British
pastime.’

He opened it, finding it empty.

‘For you to fill,’ she said.

‘I remember gathering flowers with you,
Mother, at home.’

‘They all have symbolic meanings, you
know.’

‘So you often told me.’

She chuckled and then, as he laid down the book,
indicated their surroundings. ‘What do you think?’ she asked him.

He looked at her, thinking
his heart might break with love. ‘I like it,’ he told her.

On a table in the workroom were folded-up clothes
and a scroll that she picked up and handed to him.

‘These are the deeds. It belongs to you
now.’

‘Henry Green,’ he read from the
scroll as he unfurled it. ‘That is to be my new name now?’

‘You always liked the name Henry and, after
all, you’re wearing a green hat,’ said Pyara. ‘And besides, it’s an
English shopkeeper’s name for an English shopkeeper. Welcome to your new life, Henry. From
here is where you can oversee the Assassin fightback in the city and control your information
matrix. Who knows? Perhaps you might be able to sell the odd curio while you’re here too.
Now …’ She reached for the small pile of clothes. ‘An outfit of which you can
at last be proud.’

To preserve his modesty she turned round as he
changed and then swung back to admire him. He stood there, resplendent in flowing silky robes
edged with gold, a leather chest strap, soft slippers.

‘No more bare feet, Jayadeep, or should I
say, Henry,’ his mother said. ‘And now, one last thing to complete the picture
…’

She reached to a box that also lay on the table.
Henry had seen its like before, knew exactly what it contained, and he reached for it with a
mixture of gratitude and trepidation. Sure enough, it was his old blade. He strapped it to his
wrist, enjoying the feel of it there again, after all this time.

He was no longer The Ghost now. He was Henry
Green.

And so to the twins.

‘Two Assassins,’ said Henry, on a
rooftop overlooking the city, ‘equal in height. One female, one male. Two decades old, and
those devilish smiles. You must be the Frye twins.’

He assessed them immediately: yes, the smiles
were very ‘Ethan’. Otherwise, they seemed to incorporate differing qualities. Jacob:
arrogant, impatient, a little rough around the edges; for Henry it was ambivalence at first
sight. Evie, on the other hand …

‘And you are …?’ she said.

His robes flapped in the breeze as he gave a
short bow. ‘Henry Green at your service, miss.’ He paused. ‘I was sorry to
learn of your father’s passing.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and her eyes
dipped in sorrow before finding him again and holding him in a gaze in which he swam in for a
moment or so, reluctant to come to the surface.

‘What can you tell us about Crawford
Starrick?’ said Jacob at last, and it was with some reluctance that Henry turned his
attention to the other twin, slightly irritated at having the spell broken and assessing
Evie’s brother afresh.

‘I suppose the Council desires news,’
he said, remembering himself.

‘London must be freed.
To provide a better future for all its citizens.’ The conviction lit Evie’s face as
she spoke. It danced in her eyes and made her even more beautiful, if that were possible.

‘Thank goodness the Council saw reason and
sent you to aid us.’

‘Yes, thank goodness,’ said Jacob in
a tone of voice Henry recognized. Young customers who thought him a clueless Indian shopkeeper.

He went on anyway. ‘I’m afraid I do
not have pleasant news. Today, Starrick sits at the helm of the most sophisticated Templar
infrastructure ever built in the Western world. His reach extends all across London. Every
class, every borough, the industries, the gangs …’

Jacob preened. ‘I’ve always thought I
would make a marvellous gang leader. Firm but fair. Strict dress code. Uniting a mix of
disenfranchised outsiders under one name. Evie, that’s it. We can rally them to our
side.’

Evie shot him a well-practised look of reproach.
‘Oh? The way you rallied those card players at the Oakbrook Tavern into the
river?’

‘That’s different. They beat me at
whist.’ He stared off into the distance. ‘I can see it now. We’ll call
ourselves the Rooks.’

‘You were never good at chess,
either,’ she said, casting a sideways look at Henry, apologizing for her brother.

‘You have a better plan?’ Jacob was
saying.

Her eyes were on Henry, a kindred spirit.
‘Find the Piece of Eden.’

Jacob made a disgusted
sound.

‘Well.’ Henry cleared his throat.
‘Now you’ve quite finished …’