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The warm sunlight spilling through the window flickered for a moment as the train passed whistling under one of London’s stone bridges. Evie frowned as the shadows danced over the page she had just turned to, but this was nowhere near as distracting as the sudden thud of someone landing on the roof overhead.
She sighed quietly and shifted in her armchair, staring only at the book propped open on her knee and pointedly ignoring her brother’s clattered entrance into the car.
“There’s a letter for you,” she said coolly, not bothering to look up as Jacob pushed back his hood and dropped onto the bed across from her. He had already propped his boots up on the arm of her chair before she could object, and he only smiled innocently at the glare she darted at him.
“Good morning to you too, sister,” the younger Frye said languidly, his smirk cut short as Evie deftly elbowed his legs out of her reading space. “What, not going to badger me about which pillar of society I’ve upset next?”
“No, I think you’ve already gone through them all,” she answered ruefully. “Now unless you have something useful for me, just go away. The letter is on your couch in the other car.”
The feigned hurt that Jacob pantomimed in her direction was enough to coax an exasperated smile from her though, and Evie elbowed him in the back for good measure as he passed her.
She had a few minutes of peace until her twin spoke up from the next car, his voice uncharacteristically subdued. “Evie, where did this come from?”
“A crow flew in and dropped it on my breakfast tray,” Evie sighed, snapping her book shut and pinching the bridge of her nose. Did her brother simply hate silence? “It came in the post. What did you think?”
For once, there was no sarcastic response, and the elder Assassin looked up in some confusion. She stood and crossed over, easily noticing Jacob’s rigid stance and the nearly clenched grip on the paper he was reading.
“Jacob?” she prodded after a moment, tilting her head and meeting his eyes with difficulty. He blinked at her over the letter, before forcing a smile and folding it neatly. The inked lines flashed out at her for a second here, and Evie felt a sudden stab of dread.
“It’s just a dinner invitation for tonight,” Jacob laughed despite her dark expression, tossing the paper to one side and sitting heavily on the couch. He busied himself with removing his weapons and ignored Evie as if the matter had closed.
She did not shift from the center of the car though, her arms folded and her bright eyes fixed accusingly upon him. They had been together all their lives, yet her brother still thought he could hide things from her.
“An invitation from Maxwell Roth.”
Jacob gave a sharp, irritated breath as he dropped his gauntlet onto the couch and turned to scowl at her. “Are you prying into my mail now, of all things?”
“I didn’t have to read it. I recognized his handwriting from the letterhead alone,” Evie bit out. “Something you’d be able to do too, if you ever bothered going over the documents from Mister Green.”
“Yes, naturally I’d want to study how a target dots his i’s so I can kill him more easily.” Jacob had stood now, glowering, but the elder twin easily met his threat.
“That’s beside the point,” she spoke with dangerous calm. “You’re not going.”
They stared at each other in mute challenge for a long moment, motionless save for the gentle swaying of the train. After Attaway and Twopenny, Evie knew by now that her brother was about to carelessly throw himself into danger again.
Finally, Jacob took a slight step back, but his submission was mocking as he drawled, “Yes, ma’am.”
Evie clenched her teeth against a retort, instead turning on her heel and smartly sliding the compartment door closed behind her. She leaned against the panel for a moment, folding her arms close in tired frustration. Short of darting him, she knew that she could do little to stop her brother.
Sure enough, barely a few minutes later, she heard Jacob’s brisk footfalls on the other side of the door, then a light clatter of metal as he leapt out onto the tracks.
Evie would never admit it to her twin, but she stayed awake that night, alternating pacing the coach and staring unseeing at her book. She berated herself for not getting the details of the invitation, and worried that Roth’s plans would be as she feared.
She was mistaken for once, thankfully, and the elder Frye let out a breath of relief when she heard Jacob’s raucous voice among the Rooks boarding at Charing Cross. Here, her anxiety made way again for irritation, and Evie wondered why she even bothered worrying for her brother.
Several days passed before she spoke with him again.
Evie sprinted a moment in the train’s wake as it slowed for a corner, skipping once and easily grabbing the last car’s railing. She pushed into the warmth of the lamplight, her breath misting in the evening air and her head still swimming with the guard patrols she had spent the day tracking.
She started to cross to the next car, intent on getting the (already extensively marked) Buckingham map from the safe, but Evie paused at the door. When she finally recognized the clink of metal on metal, she scowled, steeling herself and striding into the car.
She swept past Jacob, having no need to glance at him to know that he was cleaning his revolver at the desk and equally ignoring her. Evie crouched and busied herself with the safe’s lock, pointedly silent until Jacob spoke up casually, “Roth’s given me information on three of Starrick’s lieutenants. We’ll hunt them down later tonight.”
“Oh, now you want my help?” Evie asked testily, her eyes not leaving the safe. “I’d rather stay out of those chaotic ‘plans’ of yours, thank you.”
Jacob scoffed, and his smirk ground at her nerves almost as much as his next comment. “As if I’d want you there, giving orders and slowing me down. I wasn’t talking about you, Evie.”
The elder Assassin paused in confusion and glanced over her shoulder. “You mean Mister Green…?”
Jacob actually laughed at this, and Evie bristled a little in Henry’s defense. “No, not him either. I’m glad you have Greenie to help you ogle dusty relics, but maybe I need a partner who can actually make a difference in this city.”
It took her a moment to realize what he meant, but the thought was so absurd that Evie was almost certain she had misunderstood. She stood, openly incredulous. “You can’t mean Roth? Jacob, we’ve been killing his men since we got off the train from Croydon!”
“You should make up your mind, Evie,” Jacob answered lightly, his grin barbed. “You’re upset when I kill my targets, and upset when I don’t. I don’t think there are any options left.”
“Must you look at everything in extremes?” she snapped back, agitated enough to crumple the maps in her arms as she advanced on him. “Roth may be useful as an informant, fine, but don’t be naïve enough to think that he’s an ally.”
“And you’ve decided that through your reconnaissance I assume?” Jacob smirked as he glanced at the papers she had retrieved, though Evie only met his eye and all but dared him to mock her. “I for one trust action, not theories. Roth’s been helping me kill Templars, so that’s proof enough for me.”
“So you’ll only believe he’s dangerous after he’s buried a blade in your back,” Evie clarified drily. “A sound plan, brother. Let me know how that goes.”
Jacob nodded curtly and swept an arm toward the compartment door, inviting her out almost politely. She lifted her chin and stepped past him without another word.
Over the next few days, Evie wandered the streets and pieced together her brother’s exploits from Rooks and Henry’s civilian informants. With the explosions that cleared out an entire train station, to the mass panic at a park and police station in the same night, the marks of Jacob’s and Roth’s handiwork were quite clear.
She realized in hindsight that it was only obvious that Jacob would be drawn to such a like mind.
However, unlike her twin’s previous missions, the targets of these were chosen decisively and accurately. For once, there was no need for her to patch up sudden vacuums in politics or social structures, and Evie was dully shocked to think that Roth was almost a positive influence.
Her absent thoughts led her quite subconsciously to the Strand, and she ducked her head a little guardedly when she passed a group of Roth’s men. Just as she wondered how Jacob could remain at ease amid so many enemies, Evie was startled by the sudden pad of footsteps running up behind her.
She only relaxed the grip on her kukri when she realized that they belonged to a child – one of Clara’s she assumed. She turned to greet the young boy, but a glance at his pale face wiped the smile from her own.
“Where is he?” Evie asked immediately, fighting to keep her tone calm.
“He had a row with that Blighter boss, miss,” he answered earnestly. “Went charging off to the Alhambra.”
She spared a second to squeeze the boy’s shoulder in gratitude before hurrying towards the theater.
At first, she had no trouble weaving through the press of the crowd, until the sound of panic rose somewhere ahead of her. The people around her shifted uneasily and, within minutes, they were stoked into a headlong rush out of the borough.
Evie resisted the flow of passing bodies, ignoring the shoulders and stumbling figures knocking into her. A rising dread began to gnaw at her, and she pushed her way into a side street, freeing herself long enough to grapple to the rooftops.
She immediately saw the stain of firelight seeping up along the skyline, and it only took a moment for her to gather her bearings and realize which building was currently ablaze. Evie simply stood for a breathless moment upon the roof edge, the distant flames reflected in her wide eyes.
“Jacob, please tell me you’re not in there,” she whispered, dropping her head and breaking into a sprint.
Evie leapt back to ground level only after as she had come within a few streets of the theater. The singed and flustered crowd streaming past her could only have come from within the flaming walls, and she questioned some in passing just long enough for fragmented details.
They spoke of the bizarre performance of Corvus, of its spiral into increasingly more bloody exhibitions. A handful managed to recall Roth calling out Jacob by name before setting the entire stage aflame, but it was a man in an askew gargoyle mask who justified her fears.
He claimed to have seen a hooded figure rush the stage, one that had dodged the lashing flames and had vanished up into the scaffolding. The man could give little beyond that, but Evie was sure that Jacob had pursued Roth with his usual, single-minded determination. She doubted that he had even spared a thought for the dangers of the enclosed fire.
Evie circled the building, attempting to find an entrance not blocked by rubble or unbearable heat. She tried to force open a few side doors and splintered windows, but was only rewarded with minor burns and a reeling headache from the smoke.
Coughing and impatiently shaking her head to clear it, she eventually retreated to a rooftop across the street. From there, she scanned the theater windows and the faces of the nearby crowd, but caught nothing even after several tortuous minutes.
Just as she entertained a desperate hope that Jacob had already managed to escape, a flash of gold at the topmost storey caught her attention.
The figure beyond the soot-blurred glass flickered for a moment, as if pacing agitatedly. Then the impulsive decision was made, and Evie watched with fascinated horror as her brother threw himself from the window.
She stared at him expectantly for an all too precious moment, waiting for Jacob to catch himself. However, for whatever reason, the form plummeting amid the shards of glass did nothing.
Her reaction was instinctive. Knowing that the straight drop would kill him, Evie rushed forward and shot a grappling line into the falling body’s path. The hook caught in the Alhambra’s wall with a spray of stone, but she had no time to anchor the end trailing from her gauntlet when Jacob slammed into the rope.
She was relieved for a second to see her brother have the sense to grab on, until the line snapped taut and the weight wrenched hard upon her arm. Evie cried out as she was dragged bodily from the roof, and all she saw for a moment was a tangle of fire and night.
They hit the cobblestones one after the other, tumbling to a halt on opposite sides of the street.
Evie clenched her teeth against the ache in her sprained shoulder as she struggled upright and freed herself from the rope. She stumbled once, before pushing into a run towards her brother.
She had kept their fall from being fatal, but her anxiety still swelled high as she sprinted across the street. Jacob was not even trying to get up.
She crouched swiftly beside him and grabbed his coat none too gently, intent on heaving him away from the blaze. His head was bowed close to the ground with his hood up, thus Evie was startled when Jacob’s hand shot out toward her.
He latched painfully onto her forearm and kept her from standing, but the elder twin had barely snapped out a protest when she realized that Jacob was shaking. Her eyes softened and Evie slowly settled into a crouch, gripping her brother’s shoulder until his wracking gasps and coughing finally started to ease.
“Thought…” he forced out, his voice rough and abraded by smoke. “Wouldn’t… make it out…”
“Breathe, Jacob,” she said firmly, glancing over her twin and feeling somewhat relieved that he seemed unhurt aside from the smoke inhalation.
Both of them were silent for several minutes as Jacob caught his breath and slowly released his clenched grip on Evie’s sleeve. However, the roar of the flames behind them was soon joined by the clamor of approaching fire engines, and the two exchanged a look before retreating from the scene.
Evie supported Jacob by the arm as they made for the nearest Rook stronghold, glancing more than once at his downcast gaze. She doubted that he would ever admit it, but the night had clearly upset him.
“Jacob… you do know that you can come to me when you need help, right?”
The younger Assassin barked out a laugh, though it was barely distinguishable from a cough. “What happened to wanting no part in my chaotic plans?”
“I just...” Evie scowled at him before saying impatiently, “Just promise me that when we get the chance to take Starrick, we’ll do it together.”
Jacob said nothing in reply, but he flashed her his usual infuriating grin. Evie returned the smile wearily, wondering whether she was upset or relieved that he was recovering quickly.
As they walked on in companionable silence, Evie thought back on her many preparations for the Grand Master’s assassination. She considered the months of surveillance, the methodical strikes to each of his local supply lines.
Partnering with Jacob would potentially jeopardize all her work, but if it meant keeping her little brother safe, that was a price she was willing to pay.