Assassin's Creed: The Official Movie Novelization

by Christie Golden

  “Ah, ah,” he chided, and tapped Baptiste’s tightly pressed lips with his skull-headed cane.

  Baptiste’s mouth opened, and the smoke entered.

  And he was both himself… and Mackandal.

  Three more tasks, then we shall lead them.

  Baptiste stared at the machete he had dropped. It lay beside his still-beating heart. With a strange detachment, he understood that he did not need his heart. It was better, to not care. To not feel love or hope for others. Only his own desires, his own needs, mattered. And so, he left his heart where it was.

  But he picked up the machete.

  He lifted it slowly in his right hand, and extended his left arm. Part of him screamed not to do this, that he could lead just as well as himself. But another part of him—of him, not Mackandal, not Baron Samedi, wanted this.

  Besides, the drug would help with the pain.

  Baptiste lifted the machete, took a deep breath, and with a single blow severed his left arm just above the elbow.

  Blood seemed to explode from the wound, spurting wildly, but he was right. It didn’t hurt. His amputated limb fell to the earth and turned into a serpent, this one crawling toward the skull-faced loa.

  Inside his head, Mackandal whispered, “Very good. Now, you are like me. You are no longer Baptiste. You will be François Mackandal. They have seen your gesture. They know I ride you, like they might ride a horse. Usually, the loas leave when they are done.

  “I’m not leaving.”

  Calmly, Baptiste tugged at the sash tied around his waist. By himself, he tied off the spurting wound before the lack of blood could kill him. After all, unlike the Baron, he was still alive.

  Baron Samedi nodded in approval. “Good. He is with you, now and always. I will be, too.” He tapped his jawbone. “Wear my face, Mackandal.”

  Baptiste nodded. He understood.

  And he agreed.

  From this moment on, the rumors would spread. Mackandal was not dead, people would whisper. He had escaped burning at the stake. He was here, and he was full of hatred and vengeance.

  And from this moment on, Baptiste would never be seen again. He was still himself, yes; but his name would be Mackandal, and his face would wear, painted in white that would stand out starkly against his black skin, the bony visage of the grinning Baron Samedi.

  SUBJECT:

  * * *

  LIN

  Lin listened to Dr. Sofia Rikkin as she explained patiently, for the third time, that Lin needed to go into the Animus of her own free will. Lin folded her arms, staring, not answering.

  “I know what happened to you last time was… traumatic,” Sofia said. Her wide blue eyes were kind, but distant. There was compassion in their depths, but not true empathy.

  “You know nothing,” Lin replied.

  Traumatic was a thoroughly inadequate term; a bloodless, clinical word for what Lin’s ancestor, a concubine-turned-Assassin named Shao Jun, had been forced to witness five hundred years ago, and what Lin had been forced to witness in the present day.

  Five years old. Shao Jun had been five years old when the then-new emperor, born Zhu Houzhao and later known as the Zhengde Emperor, had ordered the execution of a eunuch who had conspired against him. Liu Jin had been the leader of a powerful group of eunuchs in the court known as the Eight Tigers, but he had been betrayed by them, as he had betrayed his emperor.

  For the dreadful act of treason, Zhengde had ordered that Liu be made to suffer a fate equally dreadful—the Death by a Thousand Cuts.

  There had been, in actuality, well over three thousand cuts made by the time it was all over. The gruesome event had lasted for three days. Fortunately for Liu, he had died on the second day, after only about three or four hundred cuts. Onlookers could purchase a piece of the man’s flesh for a mere qian, to be eaten with rice wine.

  Lin could not get the image out of her mind for days. Sofia’s concerned face hovering over her as Lin spasmed and screamed on the floor of the Animus Room became inextricably entwined with the horror. Even now, as Lin looked at the woman, she wanted to vomit.

  “I hope you understand that much of the time, we’re as ignorant about what you’ll experience as you are,” Sofia continued.

  “How reassuring.”

  “The reports say that you’re doing well,” Sofia said warmly. “I’d like you to go back in. After the last regression, we’ve scoured through as many other sources as are available to us, and I believe this time we’ve found a memory that’s important for us to know, but not quite so…” She groped for the word, then, in a moment of sincerity, blurted, “horrifying.”

  Lin didn’t respond. Her captors—for that was the only way she could think of them—knew more about Shao Jun than she did at this point. More than anything, Lin did not want to back into that poor girl’s body; a child who was a concubine to one of the worst playboys in Chinese history.

  No. That wasn’t entirely correct

  More than anything, Lin wanted to keep her sanity. And she knew that they would send her in, regardless of whether she wanted to go, regardless of whether the memory was horrifying.

  Sofia Rikkin might want to believe she was inviting Lin to reenter the horrible machine, but both women knew she wasn’t. She was telling Lin.

  The only choice Lin had was how she would comply—willingly or not.

  After a long moment, she said, “I will go.”

  REGRESSION: BEIJING, 1517

  Summer was coming to Beijing, but it was not yet time for the court to relocate to the summer palace.

  Dim lanterns cast flickering light over the forms of dozens of women, none of them older than thirty, who slumbered fitfully in the nigh-stifling heat. The ornately carved wooden ceiling of the vast room, the largest of nine in the 1,400-square-yard Palace of Heavenly Purity, was lost to view in the darkness, but the light still caught glimmers of dragons painted in gold leaf, and the gleam of locked ornate doorknobs.

  Twelve-year-old Shao Jun eased open the massive door and moved quietly over the black marble floor. The palace was the largest of the three located in the Forbidden City’s inner court; the residence of the Zhengde Emperor, his empress, and his favored concubines.

  Shao Jun had been born here, to another concubine who had not survived the ordeal. If any place was her home, this was, with its exquisite carved ceilings, large, comfortable beds, and the murmur of women as they learned the fine arts of their station: dancing, playing instruments, embroidery, and even how to walk, move, and laugh appealingly.

  She had learned these, too. But early on, her talent for almost unnaturally beautiful dance and phenomenal acrobatic skills had attracted the attention of the young Zhengde Emperor, who had had at once put her to good use spying on his enemies and playing amusing tricks on his friends.

  Shao Jun tried very hard not to wake Zhang as she climbed carefully into the large bed they shared with two others, but she failed. Zhang murmured sleepily, “One day you will come to bed with the rest of us and we will all die from astonishment.”

  Jun laughed softly. “No, I do not think that will happen.”

  Yawning, Zhang made room for her and sleepily pillowed her head on her friend’s shoulder. In the lantern-lit darkness, Jun smiled.

  Singled out for her tumbling and put to work by Zhengde as early as she had been—three years old—Shao Jun had always been the object of hostility, veiled and otherwise, from her fellow concubines. She’d risen swiftly, despite a comparatively low-class birth, whereas many of the hundreds Zhengde kept in the three harem buildings had only seen the Son of Heaven from a distance.

  So when Zhang, the daughter of a palace guard, had been brought into the harem a year ago—the epitome of womanly Chinese perfection with her small, bound breasts and feet, demure manners, shell-pale skin, and large, soft eyes—Jun had assumed she would be just like the others.

  Instead, once she heard about Shao Jun, Zhang had sought out the other girl. Due to her experience as the emperor’s favorit
e spy, Jun was particularly mindful of the false faces the court—and other concubines—could display. At first, she had been cautious and close-mouthed.

  Zhang seemed to understand and did not press. But gradually, something strange happened. Even though they were in competition for the attention of the emperor—whose approval could, quite literally, mean a life of luxury and comfort or a horrifically brutal death—Zhang never seemed to see it as such. Once, she made an offhand comment that struck Jun poignantly.

  “There is no one who moves as you do, Shao Jun,” she had said admiringly after Jun had bested her for the court’s approval of the Ribbon Dance. “That is why I simply watch and enjoy, like everyone else.”

  “But you are so beautiful, Zhang!” Jun had exclaimed, gesturing at her own feet and chest, which had never been bound. Zhengde had forbidden it: You are too good at hiding and climbing, he had said. Without the binding, Jun knew, men would never think of her as attractive. “I could never be like you, either!”

  Zhang had laughed. “Your tumbling and my smile are like a rabbit and a butterfly,” she said, referring to two creatures particularly loved by the Chinese. Both were valued, and neither was better than the other. They were simply different.

  She understands, Shao Jun thought, and had to turn away lest anyone see the quick tears of joy that sprang to her eyes.

  They had become like sisters since then, and now, as Zhang lay next to her, she said, as she always did, “Tell me.”

  It was both pleasure and pain for Jun to tell the stories, because she knew, as Zhang did, that they would never happen for the older girl. This butterfly was in a cage, like a cricket; but the rabbit was free.

  Once, Jun had tried to show Zhang her world. It had been a few months ago, before the third watch, when soldiers in the Drum Tower would strike the thirteen kettle drums to rouse the household in preparation for the daily audience. The concubines, of course, did not need to rise, but the eunuchs, the court officials, and their staffs all had to be ready to meet with the emperor at four A.M., and this audience would be repeated twice more during the day.

  Zhengde hated it, of course. He had proposed a single audience at night, with a banquet afterward. But even an emperor, it seemed, could not have all his desires met; the idea was met with vehement opposition.

  It was the optimal time, Jun knew, to sneak out of the quarters and explore. And so she and Zhang had. Many of the eunuchs were asleep at their posts, and Jun was easily able to trick or distract the others. They had slipped outside into the streets, where Zhang stared up at the star-crowded night sky—something she had never seen. Always before, if the concubines were permitted at to be out at night for a festival or other event, the lanterns around them hid the shyest of the stars.

  They pressed on. Jun had discovered many hidden passages over the years, but Zhang was too nervous to crawl through them, laden with cobwebs and dust as they were. Jun pressed, promising to help her, but Zhang blushed and simply said, “My feet.”

  Jun felt as though she had been struck a blow in the stomach. She had forgotten the other reason why concubines and high-born women of the court had their feet bound: so they would never run away with another man.

  Sick, she looked at her friend, seeing her own sorrow reflected in Zhang’s soft eyes.

  They had returned, and Jun had never suggested it again. But Zhang was determined to escape her gilded cage, if only vicariously through Shao Jun’s adventures, and, as now, often asked her friend to tell her stories.

  Jun listened carefully, but the other girls in the bed appeared to be sleeping deeply. One of them was even snoring lightly. Jun began to whisper, for Zhang’s ears alone.

  “Tonight,” she said, “I performed in the Bao Fang.”

  “Were there leopards?” Zhang asked.

  The name meant Leopard’s Chamber, and Zhengde had ordered it built outside the Forbidden City to house exotic animals and for acrobatic and dance performances. It was also a good place to eavesdrop, but Jun withheld that bit of information. It might put Zhang in danger, and Jun would never do that.

  “Not tonight,” Jun replied, “but there were two lions and seven tigers.”

  Zhang giggled, covering her mouth with her hand to stifle the sound.

  “There are seven Tigers here, too,” she said.

  Jun did not smile. The most important and powerful eunuchs in court had been known as the Eight Tigers. As Zhang noted, they were seven, now. Jun had been forced to watch their leader, Liu Jin, die an excruciatingly painful death.

  Zhang didn’t know that, either.

  “There are,” Jun simply agreed, and continued describing in detail the powerful muscles of the big cats and the gold and orange-black beauty of their coats, how frightening they were to the court, and how exciting it had been for Jun to perform a routine right above their cages, where she could fall at any minute.

  “And last night?” Zhang had been asleep last night. So Jun obligingly told her that last night, Zhengde had indulged in one of his favorite pastimes.

  “I know you heard about it,” she teased.

  Zhang punched her playfully. “But I wasn’t there.”

  “All right. He had the market set up again last night, and this time he pretended to be a commoner from outside Nanjing. He had Ma Yongcheng be a mushroom farmer, while Wei Bin sold silk.”

  The idea of these powerful men pretending to be ordinary farmers and merchants while he, himself, was a humble customer amused Zhengde greatly. It did not, however, amuse those members of the court forced to perform such roles—especially not any of the Eight Tigers.

  “What about Gao Feng?”

  “He sold snails.”

  Zhang buried her face in the pillow to stifle her laughter. Jun grinned, too. She had to admit, watching these proud men gritting their teeth through their performance was a sight to behold.

  “And you?”

  “Me? I helped cook noodles.”

  “Tell me more,” sighed Zhang happily. Her lids were closing again. Jun did, describing more of the silliness, speaking softly and steadily until Zhang’s breathing became slow and regular.

  Sleep did not come so easily for Jun. Zhengde had told her he was curious about the fighting going on in the north to repel some of the raiding expeditions led by the Mongol warlord Dayan Khan.

  “Maybe I will visit in secret,” he had said, warming to the idea the more he spoke about it. “I need another name—just like I do for the market! What do you think of ‘Zhu Shou’?”

  “As my emperor wishes, I am sure it is a fine name!” she had answered promptly.

  But he wasn’t done. “I will need my clever little kitten Shao Jun to wander around the campsites and listen for me,” he had told her.

  Although it could be argued that by following her emperor to battle Jun would be in a more dangerous position than Zhang, Jun couldn’t help but think the opposite. Zhang wasn’t stupid, but there was an innocence, a vulnerability inherent in her nature that Jun thought she herself had never had. Like the cat Zhengde sometimes called her, she always seemed to land on her feet.

  There was plotting afoot with the Eight Tigers, and cunning and deception among the concubines. She did not like the thought of abandoning Zhang to that. But she did not have a choice—not this time.

  If the Son of Heaven wanted her to accompany him while he attacked the Mongols, she would have to go.

  A fierce protectiveness rose in Shao Jun as she watched her friend sleep peacefully.

  This I vow, Zhang, my best friend, my only friend. If you need me, I will come. No matter what, no matter where—I will come for you, and keep you safe. No threat, no Imperial order, nothing will keep me from you if ever you need me.

  Ever.

  And as if she somehow could hear the words that Shao Jun spoke only in her heart, Zhang smiled in her sleep.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks must go out, as always, to my hardworking agent, Lucienne Diver. I’m also grateful to t
he terrific team at Ubisoft: Caroline Lamache, Anthony Marcantonio, Anouk Bachman, Richard Farrese, and especially Aymar Azaïzia, whom I pestered mercilessly and who always replied promptly and cheerfully.

  I must also acknowledge the talents of director Justin Kurzel and actors Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, and Jeremy Irons, who provided so much inspiration during the writing of this book.

  The autumnal night’s chill sliced through the man’s thin shirt as he fled, feet flying over first the concrete pathway, then the manicured grass of the rooftop’s park. Why did I come up here? he thought, wildly and far too late. I’m a bloody rat in a trap.

  The Templars were behind him.

  They knew where he had fled. And they knew, as he did, that other than the lift and the two stairways from which they now emerged with grim and silent purpose, there was no way off this roof.

  Think. Think!

  Thinking had saved him before, many a time. He’d always relied on logic, on rationality, on analysis, to solve every predicament that life in all its sadistic whimsy had thrown him, but now it was of no use to him at all.

  The deadly percussion of gunfire exploded behind him. Trees, his rational mind shouted, and the logic saved him. He altered his path, zigzagging to make himself an unpredictable target, careening erratically like a drunken man toward the trees and shrubberies, statuary and now-vacant ice cream and beverage stalls that would shield him from the hail of bullets.

  But it would only delay the inevitable.

  He knew very well what the Templars were capable of. And he knew what they wanted. They were not coming to question him, or capture him. They were intent on killing him, and therefore, very, very soon, he would be dead.

  He was not without a weapon himself, one that was ancient and powerful. A Sword of Eden, which had known the grip of both Templars and Assassins through the centuries. He had used it earlier. It was strapped to his back, its weight calming and reassuring, and he would leave it there. It would not serve him now.