An Assembly of Bones: Chapter Two

[communi_kate]

Title: An Assembly of Bones (2/?)
Fandom:Assassin's Creed.
Spoilers: Post game.
Rating:15.
Warnings: Mild violence.
Summary: Malik finally gets a lead on the location of another Eden fragment and Altair recieves an unexpected visitor...

An Assembly of Bones

An Assassin's Creed fan fiction by xahra99

 

Chapter Two.

Ten days later, somewhere in the High Atlas, Morocco.

The knife shone in the desert sun, curving in a perfect parabola towards Malik's hip. He dodged, scuffing up sand, and Marîd's blade cut empty air.

"It seems you have forgotten what it means to wield a blade," he said. "At least attack me."

Marîd gritted his teeth. He lashed out uncertainly with his knife. Malik pivoted, dodged the blow and kicked the boy's legs out from under him. Marîd hit the dust.

"You need to stay aware of your surroundings," he told the boy. "A blade is not a sword. If you are close enough to stab, you're close enough for a kick. Or a blow. But don't go too far away. At least try to hit me."

Marîd got to his feet slowly. He spat on his hands, reclaimed his blade, and slashed. Malik saw the movement for the feint it was and blocked it easily. "And don't treat a knife like a sword." He demonstrated a blow. "Think of the blade as a sharp edge to your fist. Punch with the knife. Don't swing it."

Marîd's eyes did not leave Malik's blade. "The knives are sharp," he said.

"Weapons generally are," Malik pointed out.

"Not training weapons." Marîd glanced up at the midday sun. "And fighting practice doesn't usually take place at midday in the desert."

Malik shrugged. "Your enemies may fight with blunted blades in the shade." He attacked, and this time Marîd slid away. "But mine do not."

"The Templars didn't teach me like this!" Marîd protested.

Malik raised an eyebrow. "They taught you?"

Marîd took a better grip on his blade and struck once more. He missed, but twisted his body and blocked Malik's return kick. His breath hissed between his teeth in frustration. "How do I win a fight?"

Malik decided not to mention the years of often gruelling weapons training, exercises and drills that Assassins usually started at the age of seven. "Keep practising. You're learning."

"Yes," Marîd panted as he wiped sweat from his face. "But what should I do in a fight against the Templars?"

"My advice?" Malik said. "Get a crossbow. You'd hold your own against some amateurs, but you'd have no chance against a real Templar knight. If you see one, then run."

The boy frowned."Assassins don't run."

Malik sighed. "We fight, and then we run," he said, tucking his knife back into his belt.

Marîd wiped his dusty blade off on his robes before he sheathed the weapon. "I was taught that running was a coward's act," he said. "Isn't it better to fight to the death?"

"That depends," Malik said. "Who told you that?"

"Templars-" the boy said reluctantly. "But-"

"Exactly," said Malik. "This is why we beat the Templars in the Holy Land and not the other way around."

"But-" Marîd protested.

"Is running from a fight more or less cowardly than poisoning?" Malik asked innocently. He watched the boy flush and fidget for a moment before he relented. "Just run. It's easier.

"I didn't think-"

"You didn't think this was assassination? Think again. The Templars are superior in numbers, if not in skill. We strike from the shadows. Then we run. It's the only way." He sighed. "You need a proper teacher."

At Marîd's age Malik had had faith in his masters. He'd done what they told him, instantly and without question. If they'd told him to take the leap of faith with no straw to break his fall, he'd have done it. He'd probably have regretted it afterwards, but he would have done it. Altaïr and Al Mualim between them made me a wiser man, he thought. They taught me to ask questions.
 
Maybe the boy isn't as hopeless as he seems.

Malik sighed again. "Now let's go. We still need to find somewhere to sleep tonight, and it's getting late."

Marîd took a long drink of water from the skin. "We've ben travelling for a long time," he said.

"Yes." Malik had no patience with pointless talk.

"How long do you think it'll take us to find the Eden fragment?"

Malik shrugged. "The orbs have a way of being found," he said, hoping that he sounded more confident than he felt. The Assassins had stolen the three orbs from holy places across the known world. They'd found the first in the Temple of Solomon, the second in the Great Pyramid of Giza. The third had been hidden in the Sankore mosque of Timbuktu. He could think of nothing sacred in this barren desert.
 
Maybe there is nothing in this desert. Nothing except dust and camels, anyway...
 
Despite his doubts, they found a nomad campsite just as the sun sank below the horizon. It was nothing much to look at: small, shabby and poor, but it was a thousand times more welcoming than the dry plains that surrounded it. Malik and Marîd were blinking smoke from their eyes beside a dung fire by the time the moon rose. A cluster of curious children huddled a cautious distance away. The firelight gleamed from the eyes of sleepy herding dogs.

"You say you're traders?" the nomad woman asked as she served Marîd another bowl of stew. The boy inhaled the thick soup as if it was his last meal on this earth. Malik didn't even know her name-her husband was away, and it would have been impolite to ask-so he just nodded.

The woman brightened. She looked around, maybe searching for something that she could trade for coin. "My sister spins very fine wool," she said after a while, "The best."

Malik shook his head. "We don't deal in wool," he told her. The food was good, and he felt a little guilty as he watched her face fall. "But I'm sure it's very fine." It probably was, but he had no wish to jolt around the desert laden like a tinker. One thing he had discovered on this journey was that every village had something to trade, no matter how small. Malik could have bargained to his heart's content if that had been his wish. "We deal in rare artefacts. Do you know where such things might be found?"

The nomad woman hesitated, one hand to her lips. Malik waited for her reply. He did not expect much. They had asked the same question in every village from Sijilmasa to Ouarzazate and heard nothing. "What sort of artefacts?" she asked.

Malik fought an unaccustomed surge of hope. "Stones?" he suggested. "Things of that sort." He waited for her to pull out some piece of junk that her brother's cousin's friend had found deep in the desert-authentic, rare and available at a surprisingly reasonable price-, but she just sat and stirred the pot. Eventually she scratched her head and said "Well, I don't know. But there's a castle not far away, in the mountains. You might ask them."

Malik paused with his bowl half way to his mouth."A castle? Where?"

She shrugged. "I've never been. But I've heard tell of it."

"A keep? A garrison?" She looked at him blankly."Who rules there?"

She frowned. "I don't rightly know. But their lords wear red and white."

Red and white. Malik mentally cursed. Templars."Their emblem?" he asked. "Do they wear the cross?" He sketched a Templar crucifix in the dust with his finger.

She squinted at the crude diagram uncertainly. At last she nodded. "You shouldn't go there, though. 'Tis bad luck." She paused to make the sign of the horns with her left hand. "And I heard that they serve demons."

"Demons?" Malik did not believe in demons. He believed in the power of the Eden fragments, although he wished he didn't. "You've seen ghosts there?"

She made the sign of the horns again and spat on the ground. "No. But I've heard tales."

Superstitious folk, Malik thought. They must have an Eden fragment. It's the only explanation. "What tales?"

"Not much," she said reluctantly, as if she was disappointed that she didn't have more gossip. "Only they say that the garden there is more beautiful than anything you've ever seen." She looked wistfully around at the barren hills. "Like paradise."

Malik frowned. "I don't understand."

The nomad woman waved a hand at the dry desert. "Could any mortal man transform this place into a garden? No, they deal with demons, and we all know it. 'Tis best for you to stay well away."

Malik ignored her warning. "Tell me where this castle is."

The nomad woman shrugged and pointed to the east. Malik took careful note of the direction and turned the conversation to other things.
He woke Marîd before dawn the next morning. "We're going."

Marîd blinked sleep from his eyes. He rose for once without question and began to roll up his blanket. The fire had burnt down to white embers. The nomad woman and her children were motionless bundles of blankets inside their goat-hair tent. A sheepdog slid open one eye to watch them go. Malik left some coins on the mats nearest the fire and they slipped away into the scrubby hills.

"How much did you hear last night?" he asked Marîd as they walked east.

"Enough," Marîd said eagerly. "You think the Templars have the orb."

Malik nodded. "You were apprenticed to the Templars once," he said. "How much do you know of their ways?"

Marîd looked uncertain.

"It's not a trick. I need to know everything you know about the Templars."

"Why?" Marîd asked.

Malik grinned. "We're going to join them."

Masyaf.

Altaïr's finger paused on the page.

"Did you think that you could enter the garden of heaven without such trials," he read, "as those who passed before you?"

Al Mualim had underlined the sentence. Altaïr had no idea why. He sighed and laid down the book.

He had found that most of Al Mualim's papers made no sense at all. Many of the old Master's books had sheets of handwritten annotations or slim folios from completely different authors hidden within their pages. Their authors were Saracen or Franj, of all faiths or none. The old man had spent most of his life in his library. The books were Al Mualim's legacy. Altaïr had hoped that they would lead him towards a better understanding of both the Assassins and the Templars.

He was starting to wonder if he had been wrong.

I need a translator, he thought. An index or a guide. Something that will allow me to make sense of all this.

Or failing that, a candle and about five minutes...

The sheer number of texts piled on Al Mualim's desk overwhelmed him. There were books of all shapes and sizes. There were letters from all of the Assassins' Bureaus. There were letters from men who owed the Assassins money, favours, or both. There were bribes and treaties. There were thinly veiled threats from men foolish enough to think that their money, connections or lineage would protect them from a dagger in the back.
Altaïr had never been one for reading.

The gleaming surface of the third Apple caught his eye underneath the stacks of paper. He nearly gave into temptation before he jerked his hand away.

I should keep a journal, he thought. Note down some of these concerns for later answers. Maybe those who come after me will make more satisfactory conclusions.

He knew that he should interview the Persian Assassins and find out where their loyalties lay. He should reply to all the letters, or at least enlist somebody to do it for him. He should begin to gather men that he could trust.

Rauf, he thought. Moctar. Malik, when or if he arrives. And Abbas is no friend of mine, but he too can be trusted to tell the truth whatever the circumstances.

I should...

Altaïr's gaze strayed to the windows. I am the Master, he thought. I can behave as I wish.

He felt only a little guilty as he rose from the desk, swung open the small panel in the stained-glass window behind it and climbed out onto the roof.

The rooftop was much cooler than the study. A summer storm seethed on the horizon. Lightning flashed against a nearly purple horizon. Altaïr felt a gust of hot wind in his face.

He would have liked to climb to the very top of the flagpole that decorated the fortress but refrained for two reasons; the first being that a tall flagpole was not a good place to be during a lightning storm and the second that it would be both foolish and embarrassing to be mistaken for an enemy and shot by his own archers.

In the end it wasn't the lightning or the archers that forced him down, but the sight of a small crowd gathering at the gate and a guard hurrying up the steep path to the fortress. In earlier times he would have taken it for none of his business. As Master, he didn't have the luxury. It was his gate, and his problem.

Altaïr descended.

He heard the guard's footsteps on the stairs as he climbed back through the window. The top of the man's head just cleared the stairs as he sat down behind the Master's desk. The man did not notice, or affected not to, that his Master was slightly out of breath.

"Master?" he asked.

Altaïr raised his head from the papers he was pretending to study. "Yes-" He paused a moment to recall the guard's name, "-Rashid?"
The soldier beamed. "Your next visitor has arrived, Master. Shall I send her in?"

Altaïr nodded. He had no idea who the woman was.
 
I need a journal, he thought. Or a secretary.

"I'll show her in?"

Altaïr nodded assent. It was a decision he would later come to regret.

The guard bowed. He retreated down the stairs and returned a few moments later with a small woman. Her eyes were heavily lined with kohl. She regarded Altaïr coolly.

"Nusaybah bint Khadijah al-Yerusalem, widow of Rashid ibn Sinan," the guard announced.

It took Altaïr a few seconds to recognise the name of Malik's Jerusalem companion.

Hm, he thought. This should be interesting.

The guard bowed and withdrew. Nusaybah copied neither gesture. She inclined her head slightly in the smallest of bows and said "I am sorry, but the guards at the gate would not listen. I have business with the rafiq of Jerusalem."

"You're a long way from Jerusalem" Altaïr said.

"Indeed. I am just passing through Masyaf on my way to visit my husband's kin in Safita," she said, "And you are not Malik al-Sayf." She looked suspiciously around the room, as if Malik was hiding beneath a bookshelf. "Who do I have the honour of addressing?"

"I'm the Master of the Assassins," he said. "Altaïr ibn La'Ahad. And Malik is no longer in Jerusalem. He serves the Order thousands of miles from here. The gate guards knew this, and so they sent you here to me. Surely I may help?"

She did not look impressed. "Master? You are not one of those faithful that hate women?"

"In truth I have not had much to do with women," Altaïr admitted.

She tilted her head. "Well, I can believe that. No matter. To business, then."

"To business," Altaïr agreed. "You had dealings with the bureau when Malik was in Jerusalem?"

She nodded. "Yes. Al-Sayf owes me a favour. Several, in fact. But enough of that. What do you know of the Templars?"

He shrugged. "As much as any man alive."

"They tried to buy my weapons," she said haughtily. "Stop looking like that! I inherited my husband's business. Any woman may be a merchant!"
Not a weapons merchant, Altaïr thought, but had the sense not to say it. The woman who had taken Robert de Sable's place in Jerusalem had wielded weapons, after all.

Nusaybah read the expression on his face easily.

"I suppose you think women should sell needlework or silks," she said sarcastically. "Your friend underestimated me, and I did not take long to put him right. Why do you men always think woman know nothing of war? Now I must go through the same process again, and I have not the patience. I tell you that the Templars mean to take the Holy Land through force of arms."

"They have no army," Altaïr said quietly.

She shrugged. "That's nothing to do with me."

"Are you sure that they were Templars?"

"What do you take me for?" she said indignantly.
 
Trouble, he thought. Far above, the storm broke. Rain battered at the windows. A gust of cool air drifted into the room and brought with it the scent of raindrops on hot stone. "Did you sell them the weapons?"

Nusaybah ran the silk threads woven into her hair through her fingers and gave him the seasoned cynical gaze of an old campaigner. "No. What of it? So while your enemies are buying weapons to outfit the armies they do not have, will you sit here safely in your castle?"

Altaïr said nothing. He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, creating a silence for her to fill. It did not take long.

"They've no doubt approached others," she told him.

"Who?"

Nusaybah ticked names off on her fingers. "Mohammed al-Afdal, Yusuf ibn Ali." She raised her chin to look him in the eye. "Those two won't have had enough to sell. And then there's Sahl ben Salman. He will. If Tamir of Damascus was still alive, they'd no doubt have asked him too."

"Siege engines?"

"I don't deal in such things, but I'd think it likely. Are you concerned that they'll attack the castle?" Her gaze raked the strong stone walls. "Of course you are."

"Not afraid," Altaïr said. "Cautious." He sat back. "What will you take in return for this information? Money?"

Nusaybah shook her head.

"Good. Those who can be bribed with cash can be bribed again for more." And I have not yet checked the treasury.

She smiled sweetly. "Malik already owes me a favour."

"What for?"

"I helped him kill a man," she said, as matter-of-factly as if she was choosing a flower for her hair. Altaïr suddenly realised what Malik saw in her."Then what do you want?"

She smiled and slid a folded slip of paper across the table towards him. "Let us wait and see how this plays out. I have prepared for you a list of the merchants they approached. You would do better to speak to them privately. If I make enquiries they will think I have an interest and refuse to sell. Just remember I have helped you." She smiled briefly. "The Grand Master of the Assassins would make a most excellent ally. I think that I will ask you for a favour in return."

"Favours are often too dear in the long run," he told her.

Nusaybah shrugged. "Funny. That's just what your friend said."

"You spoke of the Creed?" Altaïr asked curiously.

Her smile widened, although she ducked her head to hide it. "We did not talk much."

Altaïr wished that Malik could be here so he could see the look on his friend's face. "Your loyalties?" he tested.

"Are my own. As always."

"You're very confident."

"And you're more generous than I had heard. You are Assassins, after all."

Altaïr smiled."Yet you still came."

She lost a little of her composure. "I had...reason to believe you would not harm me."
"We don't harm innocents."
"So you say. And yet who among us are truly innocent?" This time her smile was sad.

"Indeed," Altaïr agreed. "Very well. I'll be in touch. Masyaf will send a pigeon if I wish to contact you further."

"I'll visit on my return from Safita," Nusaybah turned away. "But I must be careful. The Templars must not know of my alliance with your castle."

"They won't," Altaïr assured her.

"Please see to it. I'll not have my household put in danger." She paused on the threshold and looked back."Do you have female Assassins? I could disguise myself as one, and pass unnoticed through your gates "she asked.

"No."

"You should."

"I will consider it," he said.

"Do," she said, as curtly as if they were discussing a business deal, and left.

When he was certain that she had gone, Altaïr pulled the list towards him and began to read its contents.

To be continued...
 

I have another piece of fanart! Find a picture of Nusaybah by caroline at her website over here.