Assassin's Creed: Black Flag
Page 47

Until at last he broke the ghastly silence. “I absolve you of your errors in Havana and elsewhere,” he said, “but you are not welcome here.”
With that, he left, and in his wake James shot me a look.
“Sorry, mate, wish it were otherwise,” he said, then left me alone to ponder.
Bloody Assassins, I thought. They were just as bad as the other lot. The self-righteous sanctimonious attitude they had. We’re this, we’re that. Like the priests back home who used to wait outside taverns and curse you for being a sinner and called on you to repent. Who wanted you to feel bad all the time.
But the Assassins didn’t burn your father’s farm, did they? I thought. It was the Templars who did that.
And it’s the Assassins who showed you how to use the sense.
With a sigh, I decided I wanted to smooth things over with Kidd. So I wasn’t interested in the path he wanted me to take. But being asked, being considered suitable, there was something to be said for that.
I found him by the same pigeon coop where I’d met the native woman earlier. There he stood, tinkering with his hidden blade.
“Cheery bunch of mates you’ve got,” I offered.
Though he frowned, a light in his eyes betrayed the fact that he was pleased to see me.
Nevertheless, he said, “You deserve scorn, Edward, prancing about like one of us, bringing shame to our cause.”
“What’s that, your cause?”
He tested his blade—in and out, in and out—and then turned his eyes on me.
“To be blunt . . . we kill people. Templars and their associates. Folks who’d like to control all the empires on earth . . . Claiming they do it in the name of peace and order.”
Yes, I’d heard that somewhere before. These people who wanted jurisdiction of everyone on Earth—I had broken bread with them.
“Sounds like DuCasse’s dying words,” I said.
“You see? It’s about power really. About lording it over people. Robbing us of liberty.”
That—liberty—was something I held very, very dear indeed.
“How long have you been one of these Assassins?” I asked him.
“A couple of years now. I met Ah Tabai in Spanish Town and there was something about him I trusted, a sort of wisdom.”
“Is all of this his idea? This clan?”
Kidd chuckled. “Oh no, the Assassins and Templars have been at war for thousands of years, all over the world. The natives of this new world had similar philosophies for as long as they’ve been here. When Europeans arrived, our group sort of . . . matched up. Cultures and religions and languages keep folks divided . . . But there’s something in the Assassin’s Creed that crosses all boundaries. A fondness for life and liberty.”
“Sounds a bit like Nassau, don’t it?”
“Close. But not quite.”
I knew when we parted that I’d not seen the last of Kidd.
THIRTY-EIGHT
JULY 1716
As the pirates of Nassau finished their rout of Porto Guarico’s guards, I stepped into the fort’s treasure room and the sound of clashing swords, the crackle of musket fire and the screams of the dying faded behind me.
I shook blood from my blade and stepped into the treasure room, enjoying the look of surprise my presence brought to the face of its only occupant.
Its only occupant was governor Laureano Torres.
He was just as I remembered him: spectacles perched on his nose. Neatly clipped beard and twinkling, intelligent eyes that recovered easily from the shock of seeing me.
And behind him, the money. Just as had been promised by Charles Vane . . .
• • •
The plan had been hatched two days ago. I’d been at The Old Avery. There were other taverns in Nassau, of course, and other brothels too, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t avail myself of both, but it was to The Old Avery that I returned, where Anne Bonny the barmaid would serve drinks (and there was no one prettier who ever bent to a bunghole with a tankard in her hand than Anne Bonny), where I’d spent so many happy hours in appreciation of that fine posterior, roaring with laughter with Edward Thatch and Benjamin, where for the hours we spent drinking there it was as though the world could not touch us and where, since returning to Nassau from Tulum, I found I’d rediscovered my thirst.
Oh yes. Just like those old days back in Bristol, the more dissatisfied I was, the thirstier I became. Not that I realized it at the time, of course, not being as prone to putting two and two together as I should have been. No, instead I just drank to quench that thirst and work up an even bigger one, brooding on The Observatory and how it figured in my plans to get rich and strike at the Templars; brooding on James Kidd and Caroline. I must have looked as though I was deep in a brown study that particular day, for the first thing that the pirate known as Calico Jack Rackham said to me was, “Oi, you, why the long look? Are you falling in love?”
I looked at him with bleary eyes. I was drunk enough to want to fight him; too drunk to do anything about it. Anyway, Calico Jack stood by the side of Charles Vane, the two of them having just arrived on Nassau, and their reputation preceded them. It came on the lips of every pirate who passed through Nassau. Charles Vane was captain of the Ranger, and Calico Jack his quartermaster. Jack was English but had been brought up in Cuba, so he had a hint of the swarthy South American about him. As well as the bright calico gear that had given him his nickname, he wore big hoop earrings and a headscarf that seemed to emphasize his long brow. It might sound like the pot calling the kettle black, but he drank constantly. His breath was always foul with it, his dark eyes heavy and sleepy with it.
Vane, meanwhile, was the sharper of the two, in mind and in tongue, if not in appearance. His hair was long and unkempt and he wore a beard and looked haggard. Both were armed with pistols on belts across their chests, and cutlasses, and were smelly from months at sea. Neither was the type you’d hurry to trust: Calico Jack, as dippy as he was tipsy; Vane on a knife’s edge, like you were always one slip of the tongue away from sudden violence, and he was not averse to ripping off his own crew, either.
Still, they were pirates, both of them. Our kind.
“You’re welcome to Nassau, gents,” I told them. “Everyone is who does his fair share.”
Now, one thing you’d have to say about Nassau, specifically about the upkeep of Nassau, was that as housekeepers we made good pirates.
After all, you have enough of that when you’re at sea, when having your ship spick and span is a question of immediate survival. They don’t call it ship-shape for nothing. So on dry land, when it’s not really a question of survival—not immediate survival, anyway—but more the sort of thing you feel you should do, a few duties would slip.