Free Assassin's Creed: Black Flag by Oliver Bowden

burning building. We hurried over to the barn, where the screams of the ewes had died down, our livestock, Father’s livelihood, gone. Then, his face hot and glowing in the light of the flames, my father did something I’d never seen. He began to cry.
    “Father . . .” I reached for him, and he pulled his shoulder away with an angry shrug, and when he turned to me, his face blackened with smoke and streaked by tears he shook with restrained violence, as though it was taking every ounce of his self-control to stop himself from lashing out. From lashing out at me.
    “Poison. That’s what you are,” he said through clenched teeth, “poison. The ruin of our lives.”
    “Father . . .”
    “Get out of here,” he spat. “Get out of here. I never want to see you again.”
    Mother stirred as though she was about to protest, and rather than face more upset—rather than be the
cause
of more upset—I mounted my horse and left.

F OURTEEN
    I flew through the night with heartbreak and fury my companions, riding the highway into town and stopping at the Auld Shillelagh, where all this had begun. I staggered inside, one arm still clutching my hurt chest, face throbbing from the beating.
    Conversation in the tavern died down. I had their attention.
    “I’m looking for Tom Cobleigh and his weasel son,” I managed, breathing hard, glaring at them from beneath my brow. “Have they been in here?”
    Backs were turned to me. Shoulders hunched.
    “We’ll not have any trouble in here,” said Jack, the landlord, from behind the bar. “We’ve had enough trouble from you to last us a lifetime, thank you very much, Edward Kenway.” He pronounced “thank you very much” as though it were all one word.
Thankyouverymuch.
    “You know the full meaning of trouble if you’re sheltering the Cobleighs,” I warned, and I strode to the bar, where he reached for something I knew to be there, a sword that hung on a nail out of sight. I got there first, stretched with a movement that sent the pain in my stomach off, but grabbed it and snatched it from its scabbard in one swift movement.
    It all happened too quickly for Jack to react. One second he’d been considering reaching for the sword, the next instant that very same sword was being held to his throat,
thankyouverymuch
.
    The light in the inn was low. A fire flickered in the grate, dark shadows pranced on the walls and drinkers regarded me with narrowed, watchful eyes.
    “Now tell me,” I said, angling the sword at Jack’s throat, making him wince, “have the Cobleighs been in here tonight?”
    “Weren’t you supposed to be leaving on the
Emperor
tonight?”
    It wasn’t Jack; it was somebody else who spoke. Someone I couldn’t see in the gloom. I didn’t recognize the voice.
    “Aye, well my plans changed and it’s lucky they did; otherwise, my mother and father would have burned in their beds.” My voice rose. “Is that what you wanted, all of you? Because that’s what would have happened. Did you know about this?”
    You could have heard a pin drop in that tavern. From the darkness they regarded me: the eyes of men I’d drunk and fought with, women I’d taken to bed. They kept their secrets. They would continue to keep them.
    From outside came the rattle and clank of a cart arriving. Everybody else heard it too. The tension in the tavern seemed to change. It could be the Cobleighs. Here to establish their alibi, perhaps. Still with the sword to his throat, I dragged Jack from behind the bar and to the door of the inn.
    “Nobody say a word,” I warned, “nobody say a bloody word and Jack’s throat stays closed. The only person who needs be hurt here tonight is he who took a torch to my father’s farm.”
    Voices from outside then. I heard Tom Cobleigh. I positioned myself behind the door just as it opened, with Jack held as shield, the point of the sword digging into his neck. The silence was deathly and instantly noticeable to three men who were a fraction