Last Descendants

  “Call me Adelina,” she said. “Then will you walk with me?”

  “I’d be honored, Miss Adelina.”

  The currents of this simulation had so far swept Sean to places that thrilled him, and he’d been content to just let it carry him. He liked being Tommy Greyling, walking tall and charging into a brawl. However, he was becoming increasingly aware of a romantic direction for this memory, and aware that it was Natalya on the other side of it. He was attracted to her, and he thought maybe their experience here in the Animus would help her look past the wheelchair once they left the simulation, but thinking about that also made it a bit more of a challenge to relax into the flow of the memory.

  They entered the park, and Miss Patti said, “There’s a place like this near my home in London. I sometimes walk there late at night.”

  “Why late at night?” Tommy asked.

  “The silence,” she said. “No audience. No social gathering. Not even my own voice.”

  “I’ll try not to disturb the silence, then,” Tommy said.

  “You are not a disturbance.”

  Yet, for the next few moments, neither of them spoke. They simply strolled along one of the park’s paths, the oak and birch and sycamore trees perfectly still, as though the night’s warmth had cured and set the air. The stars above them had to contend with the light from the hotel and the streetlamps to be seen. Not far from here stood Tommy’s brother’s house. At one point, he mentioned that, and then they talked about their families and their childhoods, which were very different from each other. She’d been born in Spain to Italian parents, who had then come to New York when she was a small girl. He’d been born in Brooklyn, his grandparents having come from Germany shortly after their marriage. The two of them strolled for hours, through the night, walking the same paths over and over again.

  As the first blush of dawn appeared over the trees and buildings to the east of the park, Miss Patti announced she was feeling tired and sat down on a park bench. She laid her palm over the place next to her. “Come. Sit with me.”

  Tommy nodded and sat, resting the leather case on the ground. “Forgive me if this is a rude question, but do you always earn that much for a performance?”

  “Always,” she said. “Without exception.”

  “How much is in here?”

  “Four thousand dollars in gold,” she said without hesitation. “Another thousand in cash.”

  Tommy looked again at the case. “That’s …” But he could only shake his head. There was far more in that case than Tommy had earned for his entire service to the army, and that seemed somehow right and wrong at the same time. “Good for you,” he said.

  She frowned, and in the night shadows of the trees, it seemed exaggerated. “I won’t apologize for it.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “But I can see your disapproval.”

  “I don’t disapprove,” he said. “You have a right to charge whatever amount people are willing to pay. If I disapprove of anything, it’s the people.”

  Her expression relaxed. “You haven’t heard me sing.” She smoothed her dress across her lap. “But I take your point.”

  “I made no point.”

  “Yes, you did. I tell myself I am doing something of consequence with my music.” She looked down at Tommy’s leg. “But a single bullet costs pennies, and is of far greater consequence than all my songs combined.”

  “It’s always cheaper to destroy something.”

  “What is war like?” she asked. “I feel I ought to know.”

  Tommy admired her intention and sincerity. There was integrity in her question, even if its naivety left him struggling to find an answer. “I signed on with the Fourteenth Regiment out of Brooklyn. It was the first battle of Bull Run. The Rebels had a spot of high ground called Spring Hill, and we were ordered to take it from them. But they were dug in, and they had more guns. We charged several times, and suffered heavy casualties. Their howitzers tore us to shreds.” Tommy had to stop for a moment to keep himself from getting mired in the memory of the carnage. He cleared his throat. “Henry Hill got its name from the family who lived there. A doctor, I guess. He was deceased, but his widow still lived in their house on the hill, right in the middle of the battle. She was in her eighties. An invalid, confined to her bed.”

  Miss Patti covered her mouth. “She was in the house?”

  Tommy nodded. “A captain over one of our batteries, Ricketts, thought we were taking fire from the house, so he turned his guns on it. Blew it to hell with artillery shells. Mrs. Henry was—” He stopped himself, unsure of how much detail to give her.

  But Miss Patti laid a small, warm hand over his and squeezed it firmly. “Please, tell me.”

  “She—she was injured quite severely. I remember one of her feet was almost torn off. She died later that day. There were no Rebels in her house. She was just a lonely old widow. And we killed her.” Tommy’s voice went hoarse, nearly breaking over the groundswell of his buried remorse. “That’s what war is like, Miss Adelina. I can only answer your question with that story, and countless stories like it. War sounds big, but it’s writ small, and every life and every death matters.”

  Only crickets filled the silence that followed.

  “Thank you for telling me,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. She looked down at the leather case. “What would you do with the money in that case?”

  Tommy did not want to answer that. He suspected she was about to give it to him, moved by his story to a concern for her fellow men. But that wasn’t why he’d told her, and he didn’t want that responsibility, nor her pity. “I’d gamble it away at faro,” he said.

  “You would not,” she said. “Please answer me truthfully.”

  “Truthfully?” He shifted a little on the bench. “There were men I came home with who’re in a far worse state than me. They’ve lost legs or arms or both. They can’t work, and their families are struggling. Some of them are in desperate circumstances. I’d use the money to help them.”

  She nodded once, emphatically. “I want you to have it. I want you to do just that with it.”

  “Miss Adelina, I—”

  “Please, just Adelina.”

  “Adelina,” he said. “That is very generous of you. But …”

  “But what?”

  He looked into her eyes, and had no doubt of her complete sincerity. None of the objections in his mind seemed worth the injury of failing to honor her intent. “Nothing,” he said. “Thank you. It is truly remarkable and good of you.”

  “It is nothing,” she said. “If I could I would—”

  A commotion at the southwest corner of the park cut her off. Tommy stood as a boisterous mob of men and women surged north along Broadway, heading uptown. They carried weapons with them—pitchforks, clubs, axes, and knives—and bore signs with the words NO DRAFT painted in crude lettering. The column took a full minute to pass, numbering over a hundred.

  “Where are they going?” Adelina whispered.

  “Looks like a protest,” Tommy said, but he knew the situation was direr than that. All the street activity of the previous night made sense to him now, as did the Five Pointer’s oath—I’ll answer ya tomorrow.

  Whatever was happening, it was well planned. Even more alarming, it had managed to bring all the gangs of the Bowery, the Five Points, and the Fourth Ward together under a common banner, with a common enemy.

  “There’s going to be a riot,” Tommy said, and by all signs it would be perhaps the worst the city had seen.

  “Won’t the army put it down?”

  “There is no army,” Tommy said. “Every regiment in the city was called to Pennsylvania. The police are all that’s left.”

  “Dear God,” Adelina said.

  Every patrolman would be needed; Tommy had no doubt of that. But there was something he had to do first. “I need to get you somewhere safe,” he said.

  Varius sat alone at a table in the Atlantic Gardens beer hall, hi
s drink untouched, the crowd around him unusually subdued. No one paid any mind to the piano player or the dancers, instead given over to serious discussion and planning.

  He had tried to keep the Bowery Boys from taking part in the coming riot, but he had failed. His influence over Reddy the Blacksmith, their leader, had its limit, and in the end the gangs of the Bowery had formed an unlikely and uneasy alliance with the men from Five Points and the waterfront pirates, in common cause against the draft.

  That development had altered the Brotherhood’s agenda, and Varius now waited at the appointed rendezvous for new orders, though he wasn’t yet sure in what manner they would arrive, nor how his failure would be dealt with.

  Of the many possibilities he considered, none of them involved the Mentor himself, who now sauntered into the beer hall with his silver-tipped cane. Though he was a black man, in a city that hated blacks, the Mentor showed no sign of fear or submission, and Varius pitied anyone who would try to accost him. He wore a blue velvet coat the color of deep ocean, with a matching top hat over his shaved head, a gold Chinese coin hanging from a piercing in his left ear.

  When he noticed Varius, he crossed the room and sat at his table.

  “Mentor,” Varius said quietly.

  “Have you ever seen so many people so earnestly engaged in destroying themselves?” the Mentor asked.

  “It isn’t their fault,” Varius said. “The Templars have been working for years through Tammany to bring this about.”

  “We should have seen it coming.” The Mentor glanced around the beer hall. “We should have prevented it. You should have done something.”

  Varius had rebuked himself with those same words, but had never before heard them from another in the Brotherhood, let alone the Mentor. Shame bowed his head low. “I am sorry,” he said. “May I ask what brings you from Washington?” For the Mentor to have come meant something far larger and more important than a riot was afoot. Varius wondered if he was to be removed.

  The Mentor rose from the table. “Let’s discuss this elsewhere.”

  Varius nodded and followed him from the beer hall out onto Bowery, where they both turned south. Coves streamed through the streets, in and out of their warrens and dens, doing their gang leaders’ bidding, stockpiling weapons and delivering messages.

  “A riot is messy but efficient,” the Mentor said, the tip of his cane clicking against the paving stones. “I’ll give them that.”

  “We have our hidden blades,” Varius said. “The Templars have money and the mob.”

  “They tried something similar in Paris.”

  “This is different,” Varius said. “The people here aren’t raging against any nobility. It’s one president and one policy they despise. If the city had called off the draft—”

  “The Templars would have simply found another match to light the fire. The mob may be a crude weapon, but the Order wields it well.”

  They reached Number Forty-Two, the Bowery Boy clubhouse, but instead of going inside, Varius led the Mentor down a side alley to a cellar door. He unlocked it, and they descended a flight of flagstone steps to a narrow corridor. At the end of the hallway, they came to another locked door. When Varius inserted a special key and turned it a certain way, instead of unlocking the door, it opened a secret portal in the brick wall nearby. This doorway led them down another tunnel into Varius’s lair.

  “I don’t think I’ve been here since your father’s time,” the Mentor said.

  “He always spoke well of you,” Varius said.

  Within the chamber, thick timber posts supported a ceiling arched with ribs of stone, while gaslight sconces flickered around the room, their snakelike pipes exposed along the walls. There was a desk, and a bookshelf, and Varius’s armory. The Mentor walked to the desk and leaned against it, half sitting, his arms spread wide with the heels of his palms pressing into the wood.

  “New York will burn tomorrow,” he said.

  Varius stepped toward him. “Mentor, I can stop—”

  He held up a hand. “No. You will let it happen. There isn’t anything you can do to stop it now. This battle is already lost.”

  The room grew hotter, and Varius wiped the sweat from his brow. “How may I redeem myself?”

  “There is nothing to redeem. This is not about you, Varius, nor your legacy, as noble as it is. We must shift our focus to winning the larger war.”

  “How?”

  “A Piece of Eden.”

  At the mention of that term, Owen pressed himself against the weight of Varius’s mind. Owen and the others had come into the Animus to find the relic, and it seemed his ancestor was about to be given the same task. He wondered if Monroe was listening and watching.

  “An artifact?” Varius said. “You have one?”

  “We know of one. Here in New York.”

  “Where is it?”

  “The Aztec Club,” the Mentor said. “In the Astor House. It is a dagger that once belonged to Hernán Cortés.”

  “If you knew about it,” Varius said, “why have you never told me? Forgive me, but why have we left it there?”

  “We have only recently confirmed its existence. The members of the Aztec Club are not aware of what they possess, or we might have discovered it sooner. They treat it superstitiously, as a kind of totem. They do not wield it as it was intended.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “You must steal it. Tonight. Get it out of the city and take it to General Grant in Mississippi. He is a member of the Aztec Club, so he will recognize it. You must impress upon him its importance, without revealing its true nature.”

  “Ulysses Grant?”

  “Yes. With his capture of Vicksburg, we believe he is the best chance for a Union victory, and the strongest candidate to oppose General Lee. But Lincoln must believe in him. His troops must believe in him. The North must believe in him.” The Mentor stepped away from the desk, toward Varius. “If the Confederacy wins, or even forces the negotiation of a treaty, the Templars could take control of the country. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Everything we’ve achieved. Everything my grandmother fought for in New Orleans. It will all be lost.”

  “I will not fail, Mentor.”

  The Mentor nodded. “I trust not, Varius. And if any oppose you, bring them peace.”

  “I will, Mentor.”

  “You are young, but you have great potential. You are your father’s son, and the Brotherhood is with you.”

  The Mentor left then, returning Varius to the solitude to which he had become accustomed. His father’s death had left him the only Assassin operating in New York City, something the Mentor had maintained so as to avoid attracting the attention of the Templars in Tammany Hall, leaving Varius with a legacy to honor. His father had successfully and almost single-handedly held the line and kept the Order at bay in the city. This riot was Varius’s failure, evidence of his shortcomings, burning by its own fuel and stoked by Tammany’s political bellows.

  Varius crossed the room toward the armory to equip himself. Though newer gauntlet designs had come into use in England, involving darts and rope launchers, Varius preferred the purity of a simple hidden blade, which he could easily conceal within the sleeve of his coat. He belted on a dozen throwing knives and a revolver, and pocketed a pair of knuckledusters. Then he grabbed his set of lock picks, but left his tall beaver hat behind.

  Back out on the street, he followed Bayard west into what would normally have been enemy territory. But tonight, with the temporary truce, he took Baxter south, all the way to Paradise Square, the tough and vicious heart of Five Points. Here, the Roach Guards and all their affiliates concentrated their power, and though Varius drew stares and Irish curses passing through, no one challenged him. From there, he followed Worth Street west, across Broadway, and then turned south again onto Church Street.

  Then he went up, scaling the walls until he reached the city rooftops, which he traversed soundlessly,
leaping and running in agile, fluid movements. He crossed the next nine blocks in free run, until he crossed Barclay and arrived at the Astor House, the chapel of St. Paul’s to the south. The church’s clock tower rose up high into the heat of the night, and Varius almost wished he had need to climb it for the view. Instead, he focused on the hotel, extending his senses to locate the Aztec Club within it.

  His Eagle Vision had never been as strong as he would have wished, but Varius never let that cause him to feel inferior to other Assassins in whom the gift was more powerful. He possessed enough of its sight to search for the Piece of Eden. Such an object would emit an undeniable radiance, if one knew how to look for it.

  Varius focused on the building, the contours of its cold and lifeless stone shell encasing brick and mortar, timber and metal. He stared into the building’s heart, straining until his eyes watered, reaching for the power of the relic.

  Several moments went by. Then he detected it. A faint vibration, as though something was tugging at the fringe of the world’s curtains. It was the Piece of Eden, and it rested on the fifth floor.

  Varius shimmied down from his lofty perch to the street, crossed it, and then scaled the hotel walls to its rooftop. He then skirted along its ledge, each step bringing him closer to the relic he kept within reach of his senses, until he stood directly over it. From there, he climbed over the ledge and descended along the wall and found the window to the fifth floor open.

  The room inside was dark, a thick Turkish rug beneath his feet. A table rested near the fireplace, surrounded by upholstered chairs, and a desk stood nearby. The Piece of Eden wasn’t in that room, so Varius moved forward through a door to his left, guided by the compass of his Eagle Vision and the pulsing of the relic’s energy.

  The next room was larger than the first, with three tables, and chairs lining three of the walls. The fourth wall contained a large fireplace, and above it hung the crest of the Aztec Club. Mementos and souvenirs lined the mantel, and among the watches, pistols, and medals, Varius saw the dagger.