we fought the law, and the law won...

Title: Both Worlds as Our Companion
Fandom: Assassin's Creed
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Violence, spoilers, historical liberties
Summary: Altair and Malik's hunt for the remaining Eden Fragments looks set to take them to some strange places, but none stranger than the Great Pyramid at Giza. And they're not the only ones searching...
Sequel to the Favour of Heaven.

Both Worlds as Our Companion

An Assassin's Creed fan fiction by xahra99

Umar al-Arish held his lantern high as he walked down the narrow halls of the Grand Bazaar. The candle cast its flickering light over the closed and padlocked doors of the many stalls that lined the market corridors. During the day the corridors were crammed with goods and customers, redolent with the smell of exotic spices, unwashed bodies, and the sweet scent of money. At night the great iron-studded doors were closed and locked. Everything was quiet.

So when Umar turned the corner into the antique market a scraping noise put him instantly on his guard. He paused and squinted further down the dim alley.

One of the shops had been opened.

That would not have been so unusual in the early morning; but the tiny oiled-leather windows set high into the bazaar roof were still dark. The complex was locked until dawn. The only people allowed within the bazaar at night were Umar and his fellow guards.

Umar crept closer. His hand fell to the hilt of the sword in his sash. When he was half way down the corridor a pale figure exited the shop and closed the doors as if he had every right to be there.

Umar nearly hesitated for a moment at the figure's casual arrogance (surely a thief would not be so brazen) before he remembered his place and drew his sword.

"Name yourself!"

The silhouette turned towards him. A deep hood concealed its features. It clutched a slim leather folder in its hand.

Umar nearly dropped his sword. He stammered out a prayer against jinn.

The figure took two quick steps towards him. Umar caught the glint of a long sword at its side and the prayer died on his lips. Jinn did not wear swords-they had no need of them. Only mortal men required weapons, which meant the figure in front of him was no more supernatural than Umar himself, which meant...

"Thief!" Umar bellowed at the top of his lungs.

The stranger bolted.

Umar followed, more out of instinct than anything else. The lantern got in his way before he had taken three strides and Umar dropped it to the floor in a shower of sparks. The figure's white robe was clear enough.

The antique market was a long blind alley. Umar chased the stranger to its end, expecting him to stop or at least slow down as he neared the shuttered double doors of the large shop that marked its end. The thief did neither. He leapt at the barrier, found purchase for the soles of his boots on the rough planks and caught the iron bar that ran from wall to wall of the narrow arcade.

Umar guessed the stranger's plan in an instant.

Umar replaced his sword in his belt. As the thief pulled himself up on the beam and turned left with a dancer's grace, holding both hands out from his side for balance, Umar ran to the shop door directly under the path of the beam. A narrow window gleamed above the door. By the time the thief slit the leather with a long curved knife and disappeared through the skylight, Umar was halfway up the door. He pulled himself up, placing hand over hand and using the hinges, lock and sill of the door as infinitesimal handholds and footholds. He was sweating by the time he grasped the edge of the ruined window.

Umar hauled himself through and fell onto the roof, gasping like a half-drowned kitten in the humid night air. He rolled onto his back and caught a glimmer of white out of the corner of his eye.

He gave chase.

The roofs of the bazaar rose up around him, alternately rounded and smooth like the back of a merchant's camel. Sweat broke out on Umar's forehead and gathered slickly beneath the collar of his robe. His knuckles stung from splinters which he had overlooked in his haste to climb.

Umar had little idea of what he would do once he caught the thief, but he knew that it had been a hundred and forty-three years since a thief had successfully stolen from the souk. Professional pride prevented him from abandoning the chase, even as the mud brick and plaster of the roof sagged treacherously beneath the thin soles of his leather boots.

Ahead of Umar, the thief reached the end of the bazaar roof. This did not seem to trouble him. He sped up instead of hesitating, his back receding ever faster to Umar's sweat-stung eyes, and leapt from the roof onto a row of houses below. His white robe billowed behind him like the wings of some strange bird.

Umar raced to the end of the roof, gritted his teeth, and jumped.

His own heels hit the opposite roof with as much grace as a dying seagull. His hands skidded painfully along the rough surface of the roof. Momentum carried him forwards, stumbling and breathless, and even, he thought, a little closer to his prey.

"Stop!" he choked.

The stranger paid him no heed. He redoubled his pace, flying like a hawk over the narrow alleys that separated one block of houses from the other. Once he checked his pace and doubled back towards Umar, only to jump sideways to yet another house. Impossible as it seemed, Umar had gained a little. The stranger had to plan his route and calculate the best way to achieve it. Umar had merely to follow. Adrenaline pumped in his veins. He whispered a charm on each thudding footfall, begging the Lord to give his feet wings like the prophet's steed, so that he could catch the thief and regain whatever it was that had been stolen.

But the gods must not have been listening to Umar that night.

As they passed the wall of a new-painted house, gleaming white in the dim moonlight, Umar missed his step. He fell sprawling onto the roof. The descent bruised his knees and fouled his robe with the paint, which Umar knew for a fact was made from pigeon droppings and white lead. It was a toxic and highly unpleasant mess.

Umar climbed to his feet and looked around.

The thief was gone.

He saw no white robe amongst the sea of rooftops. No flicker of movement caught his eye. The stranger had vanished.

Umar exhaled heavily and looked down at himself.

The basest beggar would have been ashamed of the state of his tunic. His hands were bruised and bleeding. His sword had fallen from his sash somewhere along the rooftops.

Maybe it is a good job I did not catch him, Umar thought as he brushed ineffectively at his clothes. His glance slid along the dusty roof and up the ruined, paint-streaked wall, where it fell on something that made his blood run cold.

It was a simple, shallow handprint. Marked clearly in the fresh paint, it was deepest at the heel of the hand and slightly angled, as if the hand's owner had used the corner of the building to gain momentum as he jumped to the next roof. The outline of the palm and fingers stood out clearly. There were three fingers, and a thumb. The left ring finger had been hacked off at the first joint.

Umar's grandmother had been Syrian. He recognized the mark from a thousand late-night tales told around the cooking fire.

It was the sign of an Assassin.

Altaïr waited until the guard had jumped down from the roof before he left the shadow of the mosque's dome. The city was silent around him, drugged with the oppressive heat of summer. He leapt from the roof, halted his fall by grasping a wooden beam that jutted out from a ruin and lowered himself easily to the street below. The leather folder he had stolen from the antique shop was rolled securely in his belt.

Altaïr glanced around to get his bearings. The air was thick and redolent of river mud, with an earthy stench that he recognized as the scent of the tanners' quarter to the west. A cluster of ruined buildings jutted along the skyline to the southwest. They marked the remains of the town's predecessor, Fustat, city of the tents, which had been burned to keep it out of the hands of the Crusaders nearly thirty years before.

Altaïr had no love for the Crusaders. He spat at the sight of the broken citadel and set off unerringly into the maze of mosques and markets that made up the city of Al-Qahirah, which the Franks called Cairo.

By the time Altaïr reached the tangled streets of the Jewish quarter the rooftops were noisy with the clatter of pigeons' wings as the fanciers called in their birds for their morning feed. The low red light of dawn hung ominously over the city. It stained the mud brick buildings a blushing scarlet and gleamed rosily from the tiles of azure and white that decorated the gates of wealthy homes.

As Altaïr neared his destination, the mud brick buildings began to far outnumber those with glazed facades. There were quarters in Cairo where even the beggars ate soft white bread, where silks hung from every window and the trees were heavy with apricots and nesting birds.

The ghetto was not one of them.

Altaïr walked around a corner into a small and twisted alley. The corridor was too narrow even for a wagon, evidenced by the piles of rubbish and stained straw that littered its walls. He stopped outside a shuttered shop and rapped on the small door that stood beside it.

There was the sound of someone struggling with the bolts. Finally the door opened and Altaïr slipped inside.

Malik did not even wait until the door had closed to snatch the leather folder from under Altaïr's arm.

"This is it?" he asked as Altaïr followed him up the steep flight of stairs that led to the living quarters above the papermaker's shop.

"Of course."

"Do not pretend you do not make mistakes," Malik snapped as he pushed the door at the top of the stairs open with his shoulder. The room revealed was low-ceilinged and small. It had once been decorated with blue and white tiles, but over the years many of the tiles had come away from the wall and shattered on the floor. The plaster was the dun color of a donkey's hide.

Altaïr kicked the door closed. It creaked alarmingly and sagged on its hinges. "This is not a mistake."

Malik snorted. He laid the folder on a small table in front of the only window. Altaïr went to stand in front of the window, where he watched the pigeons wheel above the roofs without showing any interest in his prize.

Malik opened the folder, handling the old texts with reverence. He leafed through several old documents of yellowed calfskin before selecting one and holding it up to the light. Finally he glanced up at Altaïr's motionless silhouette. "It seems not," he said. "This is it. You did well."

The paper Malik held seemed simple enough. A pair of right-angled lines cut across the paper like the sides of a quadrant. Inside the lines ran an interlocking pattern of smaller strokes, with a miniature diagram of what appeared to be a house in the centre of the drawing.

Altaïr laced his fingers together and stretched. "My thanks," he said sarcastically.

"Do not rest upon your laurels." Malik retorted. "And get out of the way. You're in my light."

He rotated the paper, whispering under his breath as he deciphered the faint lines of Arabic script that annotated the drawing. "Queen's...King's Chamber." He stabbed a finger at the house shape. "Here. The Eden fragment surely sleeps within."

Altaïr turned away from the window with the ghost of a smile on his face. He bent down and peered dubiously over Malik's shoulder. "You place much faith in words," he remarked.

"Words!" Malik snapped. He knew that Altaïr was perfectly capable of reading, should the mood so take him. It infuriated him that the other Assassin held scholarship in disdain. "Need I not remind you why we are here? The Eden fragment's last illusion-that globe you hold so closely-that was a map, Altaïr, a map in which you placed your faith. This parchment is a map. A map of the Great Pyramid at Giza. One of the world's seven wonders."

"A map drawn by thieves."

"A map drawn by thieves," Malik said, "to guide the quest of an Assassin."

Altaïr smiled like a jackal. He traced one finger over the lines of slope and tunnel that marked the Great Pyramid's passages. "It is about time fortune began to favor us."

Malik sighed. "Fortune has favored us, Altaïr."

"Except for the storms on the Roman sea."

"Except for them." Malik allowed.

"And the plague at the Nile delta ports."

"Well," Malik said, "we are not yet dead. That's something. And we know the location of the Eden fragment. That is something else. I will talk to ben Ishaq. He has contacts among the linen traders. They rob the monuments of their treasures in search of ancient cloths. They will get us inside the pyramid. "

Altaïr put down the map. "You speak with confidence."

"Yes. For the first time I begin to believe that we will do this." Malik replaced the map into the leather folder as he spoke. He piled the remaining papers neatly on the table. "One moment-how went your mission? Did it go smoothly as expected?"

Altaïr shrugged. "I was followed," he admitted. "One of the bazaar's guards proved more ...persistent than I had anticipated. I lost him amongst the rooftops and made my way back here."

"Are you sure? You were not followed?"

"As sure as I ever am. What of it? The Cairene guards are slow and soft. Even Acre's Templars would slit their throats without too much trouble. We would make short work of them."

"Maybe we would." Malik said. He gestured at the glazed Star of David that was still visible on the room's fading tiles. "Our hosts may not. I have no wish to bring trouble to their doors."

"They will be safe. I will make sure of it."

Malik regarded his companion with well-worn skepticism. Chaos followed Altaïr like flies followed oxen. "Still," he said. "We ask much of them and give little in return. I have a mind to present the rest of these papers to ben Ishaq for his hospitality. Linen is hard to come by in this city."

Altaïr picked up the closest parchment. "What are they?" he asked

"I have not looked." Malik said. "Old documents. They are not important."

"What?"

Umar's voice cut through the murmuring conversation of the bazaar. He loomed, red-eyed and un-groomed, over the wizened merchant who owned the antique store. The merchant, already dismayed at the invasion of his shop, winced. "A folder of documents, my lord. Containing..."

"Quiet!" Umar glanced around. People had begun to stare. He grabbed the merchant by the collar of his robe and dragged him choking into the shallow shelter of his tiny shop. A walnut case gaped mutely, bearing witness to the work of the thief Umar had disturbed. Umar gestured at the box. "Tell me once again."

The merchant's voice dropped into the rich patter of his kind as he sensed Umar's interest. "Documents, my lord. A friend of mine found them. They were hidden in a chamber off the women's gallery in a house which he was demolishing. Knowing that I have an interest in such things, he..."'

"I have no interest in their history!" Umar snapped. A sleepless night and day had begun to take their toll upon his humor. The merchant cowered. Umar sighed and reined in his temper with difficulty. "A list of the documents, if you please." He lowered his voice and hissed "The safety of our ruler may depend on it!"

The merchant nodded. He withdrew a huge velvet-bound ledger from the ebony counter that took up one full side of the shop. Licking one finger, he flicked the pages until he found the one he sought. "Here, my lord. The dates of the documents varied widely. I myself dated many of the papers to between four centuries and one decade in age."

"Get on with it!"

"I cannot see how my lord would possibly have any interest in-"

Umar growled. "The Assassins are in the city! There is but little time. Hurry, for the Prophet's sake!"

The shopkeeper took a look at Umar's face and hurried to obey. "One dozen fragments of the Koran, my lord. A letter from the Karaite elders of Ascalon to their companions at Alexandria. A second letter, this one from the secretary of the Caliph of Cordoba to the Khazan of the Khazars. A plan of the necropolis at Giza. And," he swallowed, "a partial map of the Cairo citadel."

Umar took a sharp breath. "That's it," he hissed. "That's what they were after!"

The citadel of Cairo was widely regarded as the most impregnable fortress within a week's good travelling. It had been completed ten years previously, and had replaced the old palace as the principal dwelling place of Cairo's ruler.

Cairo's ruler. Sayf al-din, the Sword of God. And, more importantly, the brother of Saladin.

Umar swallowed. The general was known as a fearsome warrior, a gifted and compassionate ruler in his own right. Surely the Assassins could not kill him?

"Speak of this to no-one," he said, and left.

The merchant watched Umar go. He hesitated for less than the time it took to blink thrice before sidling over to his partner in the next store.

"Friend," he said, "Listen..."

The sun was high in the sky when Malik heard somebody knocking at the narrow door between the shops that led to their hiding place. At first, he ignored the sound. When it failed to disappear he checked the knife in his belt and sidled down the stairs. Altaïr had left the building some hours earlier on a mysterious errand of his own but this noise did not sound like Altaïr.

He tucked the dagger under the stump of his upper arm and his left side, pointing inwards, as he struggled with the locks. A knife in such a position could be easily overlooked. Malik had retained the dark linen robes of a rafiq of the Assassins, and the polished wooden hilt of his knife blended easily with the fabric.

He opened the door.

The worried and heavily bearded face of Ibrahim ben Ishaq, one of Cairo's few Jewish paper traders, stared at him. The Jew was sweating heavily, not unusual on such a warm day, but he shifted from foot to foot as if ants were biting him under his clothes.

Malik held the door open. "Safety and peace be with you,' he said politely.

"May peace be with you, friend," Ben Ishaq said, somewhat rapidly. "It is certainly not with me."

Malik scowled. "What news?"

The merchant waved a hand and hastened inside the door. He closed it behind him, reached for the bolt and slid it into place. Malik unobtrusively plucked his dagger from its hiding place and replaced it in the scabbard at his belt while Ibrahim's attention was distracted. "What news, my friend?" he asked again as he preceded ben Ishaq up the stairs.

The merchant did not reply.

Malik shrugged. He held the door open at the top of the stairs. There was no tea, but a large pitcher of water waited on the table. He gestured to ben Ishaq to sit and poured two cups. The trader perched uneasily on the edge of his seat as Malik sat beside him. He looked as if he would rather be anywhere but with the Assassin. He did not drink the water Malik offered him.

Malik frowned. Ben Ishaq was an old friend. He had supplied Malik with paper for his maps to maintain his guise as a Jerusalem cartographer and book salesman, and he had been the only person to offer the two Assassins lodging when they arrived, penniless and travel weary, at Cairo's port. "What troubles you, Ibrahim?"

The Jew ran his hands over his head. "Maybe you would know better than I."

Malik took a long drink of his own water. "Truly, I have no idea," he said, slightly confused at ben Ishaq's phrasing.

The merchant shuffled in his seat. He ran his hands over his face until they glistened with sweat. His knuckles gleamed whitely. Finally he burst out, ""I would not have welcomed you into my home if I had known what you had come to do!"

Malik was nonplussed. Ben Ishaq purchased rags from tomb robbers. He had made no secret of the fact to Malik. The Assassin had anticipated no objections towards them ransacking a tomb, even a tomb of the ancestors.

"What?" he said stupidly.

"This...this plot! You plan to assassinate the general!"

"We plan nothing of the sort!" Malik said indignantly.

"Indeed? Then why is the whole of Cairo talking of it?"

"Then the whole of Cairo must be wrong!"

"It is the talk of the bazaars!" Ben Ishaq retorted. "And in all the marketplaces. My God!" He gestured around the shabby room. Sacks of linen rags still haunted its corners, testament to its previous life as a storehouse for the paper factory below. "I cannot believe I offered you shelter!"

"Do you not listen?" Malik snapped." We no longer do the bidding of the Brotherhood!"

"I do not care which master you follow!" Ben Ishaq burst out. "But the General is the brother or our own great Saladin, and I would not see him killed!"

"You shall not!" Malik snapped, beginning to lose his temper.

Ibrahim ben Ishaq must have seen Malik's anger, because some of the fury seemed to drain out of him. "Then what are you here for?"

"What I told you."Malik said.

"I am not sure that I believe you. Where is your companion? Does he even now sink his blade into the throat of our ruler?"

"Do you not trust me?" Malik demanded. "Have I ever sworn an oath and then violated it? Have I ever signed an agreement that I did not respect? I swear in the name of the Prophet that we plan no such thing! As for my companion, he is doubtless buying bread, or some other menial task. He is more easily mistaken in the streets than I. We have come to this city to find the relic which I spoke of. And that is all."

Ben Ishaq bowed his head. "You are a man of honor. I apologize." He pointed a gnarled finger at the leather folder that lay on the table. "But they say you stole a map."

"Now that is the truth," Malik said cautiously. "We took it from the bazaar last night."

"Somebody saw you," the merchant told him.

Malik cursed Altaïr under his breath. "The map was necessary."

"Nevertheless. The Holy Book prohibits thievery in every situation, no matter how desperate the need. And I have a stall in the Bazaar itself. I would not like to see the area gain a reputation for poor security."

Malik bowed. The gesture was as graceful as he could muster, given his seated position and his missing hand. "My apologies."

"My thanks." Ben Ishaq said. He picked up the folder. "May I see for myself what you have stolen? Whatever it may be, it has set the guards of the city buzzing like flies in a honey pot."

Malik spread his hand. "Of course."

The Jew picked up his water and sipped at it as he examined the parchment. It was a small gesture, Malik thought, and kindly meant. The room grew so quiet that Malik could hear the dogs whimpering outside. Finally ben Ishaq looked up.

"If things are as you say, then this document will be of great value to you."

Malik slipped the paper back into its folder. "My thoughts indeed."

The merchant pointed towards the pile of paper that Malik had put aside. "And what of these?"

"Gifts,' said Malik, "In return for your kind hospitality."

"That may be not all they are," Ibrahim ben Ishaq. Frowning, he leafed through the documents and selected a single page, which he pulled out to examine. "They say you have stolen the plans to the General's very chambers,' he said, "They say you plan to kill him in his sleep."

"Nonsense. I have examined all of the papers, and there is nothing-"

Ben Ishaq passed the page to Malik.

Malik swallowed. He whispered a curse in the dialect of the Syrian shepherds. The plans had made no sense to him on a cursory reading, elated as he had been at discovering the map of the great Pyramid and the location of the Eden fragment. Their script was indecipherable. It revealed its secrets only on a closer examination. The angular lines of ink and flowing ornate calligraphy made up a second map. The pattern marked on it was of an unusual shape, a human head with a jutting chin and its face pointed downwards. It was the pattern of the walls of Saladin's citadel. Inside the barricades each building and gate was described with grace and detail.

Malik lowered the parchment to the table. His missing limb itched, as it always did when he was concerned. "The map," he whispered.

Ben Ishaq watched him carefully. When he was convinced that his friend displayed the emotions of true and great surprise he replaced the citadel map onto the heap of documents. "Indeed. I am told the city guard is already out in force."

"They are not a problem." Malik said dismissively.

"Sayf-al-Din's personal guard might give you more of a challenge. They want you dead, old friend."

"They will not be the first." Malik glanced to the window. Their shadows already showed long on the floor. Cairo's sky gleamed with the amber light of dusk. He wondered why Altaïr had not returned. "But we must - I must - show them that we are no threat. Assassination is not our intention."

"How will you do that?" Ben Ishaq asked, honestly puzzled. "Do you know any influential men in Cairo?"

Malik mutely shook his head. His gaze fell on ben Ishaq's half-full cup. And then he remembered a hot spring afternoon in Masyaf, and an ambassador who had suffered the Master's hospitality, even though he had no wish to do so. "In fact," he said, "I do."

Chapter Two..