There was no end to Rato–Connor's curiosity that evening, and as the sun made its descent into the mountains and the sky turned from a dull grey to a clouded periwinkle, his dark eyes never ceased to sparkle in the pale light of the snow. Almost every person we passed gave him a strange look as he walked by, agape with wonder.

"Hey." I poked his cheek. "I would not recommend making that particular face in the future. People might think you a halfwit."

"Sorry." He shrugged. "I just find everything here so. . ."

I knew what he meant. "Yes," I said, "I do, too."

The snow was falling heavier now as twilight began to close in, and I was ever grateful for the thick linen of my skirts. Achilles had not yet managed to accustom Rat–Connor! to the appropriate attire of those of the colonies, as he still wore the hide clothing of his people. It must have been of sturdy stuff, for I did not see him shiver even once. I did, however, see that he wore the bracelet I had sent him. I had scarcely seen him since Christmas, as I had spent the holidays with my family, and then the snow had been so bad that I could not leave the house to get to Achilles's manor.

"You're wearing the bracelet!" I said, taking him by the wrist so I could further examine this revelation. It was only a simple leather thing that I had picked up from the market just before the snows hit.

"Excellent observation," he said. "Thank you for it. Though, I must ask, pray tell why I received it?"

"I really need to teach you about Christmas." I rolled my eyes, though there was no mal-intent behind the action.

A town crier was standing on the corner of the street as we passed, and a crowd had gathered around him to listen to him spitting out, "I grow tired of this. It seems that each day a new tax is levied, a new rule enforced, all without our consent. The Revenue Act. The Indemnity Act. The Commissioners of Customs Act. Oh, Chancellor Townshend must have thought himself so clever when he papered these thefts and made them law. But the Constitution says we have a right to refuse! That there will be no taxation without representation. Tell me - who represented us in parliament? Spoke on our behalf? Signed in our stead? Give me a name! Only, you can't! And do you know why? You can't tell me who represented us because nobody did."

When we at last came to a halt outside a corner shop named, very simply, General Store, I said, "I do hope that this is the shop that Achilles referred us to."

"If it is not, the old man will just have to deal with it," he said. "Would you care to join me indoors?"

I gestured to the door. "Ladies first."

He blinked. "Precisely."

I grinned. "You don't get it. I just called you a lady."

"Oh." He shrugged. "You first."

"Age before beauty," I said.

"Still you first."

"No pain, no gain," I countered back.

Now he was genuinely confused. "What pain?"

I punched his arm hard enough to make him stumble back in shock, and I laughed. "Come along, darling. In we go."

He made a particularly obscene gesture to me as he pulled the door open, and a blast of warm air hit us as we stepped inside. A fire blazed in the hearth at the opposite wall, colouring the wood plank walls and the stock that lined the shelves an aeneous orange colour.

"You lost?" a gruff voice asked from behind us. We both turned so see a rather large man at the desk. His navy jacket, though of a fine make, was stained along the sleeves and down the front, and he scratched at his dark beard, eyeing us thoughtfully.

Connor stepped up to the desk and lay Achilles's list flat on the worn-down wood. "I need the items on this list."

The man slid the list towards himself and squinted at it - in need of eyeglasses, perhaps. "Will you be paying with coin or trade?"

Connor placed the pouch of money on the counter between them. A greedy smile slowly crawled across the man's face as he weighed the bag in his hand. "Some of these things I have, some I don't," he said. "Lumber's hard to come by since my supplier up and vanished. I have the tools and pitch, though. Nails, too. Where do you want this delivered?"

"Our wagon is near the state house," Connor said, gathering the change into his hand. "Dark colour, dark horse. It cannot be missed."

As we headed for the door, I turned back and said, "Thank you. God bless."

The town crier was still on that corner on our way back to Achilles, and I pulled on Connor's arm to slow down so I could listen. A larger crowd had gathered around him, and they were shaking their fists to the sky and snarling along with him.

"Who stands in parliament for Boston?" the man was shouting now. "For New York? For Virginia? No one! But Old Sarum is represented. And Newport and Newtown. Seaford and Saltash! The list goes on. Rotten boroughs one and all. What is become of the rights of Englishmen? Are we not entitled to have a say in our governance? Who are they to silence our voices? To insist we be represented by strangers? Have you forgotten the Stamp Act and how we responded? We spoke up! We resisted! So they stood down! We were heard and it was repealed! But now. . . now too many are silent - or worse: they excuse it! The taxes are not so high, they say. The money is put to good use, they say. Fie, I say! Fie, we should all say. Though the taxes may be small, they were enacted and enforced without our consent. As to their use? They pay governors and judges! And if it's Britain pays them, it's Britain whom they are beholden, not us. Do none see the danger here?"

The familiar hunched figure that was Achilles stood in the town square, watching, expressionless, as hordes of angry colonists raged about, throwing shards of ice and snow at a group of eight Redcoats they had cornered outside the Town Hall. As I would learn later, the riots started out initially due to a wigmaker's unreasonable prices.

"What happened?" Connor asked, having to speak louder than his usual soft purr to be heard above the enraged sneers of the colonists and the desperate shouts of the redcoats as they were struck again and again by rocks and ice.

"That is what we're going to find out." Achilles started to hobble into the crowd. "Follow me."

He led us past large groups of both men and women shouting at the British soldiers; the colonists were armed with jagged-edged bats, great chunks of ice, rocks - anything they could get their hands on that would cause harm to the soldiers. They poked their heads out of windows and hung around corners, hurling abuse (and at times, the contents of their chamberpots) at the men in red.

"I say again: disperse!" the redcoat commander, whom I recognised to be Thomas Preston, was shouting desperately at the people from where he stood, trapped with his soldiers, outside the doors of the Hall. "Congregating in this manner is forbidden."

However, the people didn't listen. Men and women alike shouted at the soldier from within the crowd:

"We're not going anywhere, bug!"

"Oi! Why don't you go back to England?"

Preston didn't back down. "No good can come of this chaos. Return to your homes, and all will be forgiven."

"Never!"

"Not until you've answered for your crimes."

"You're right cowards, pointing your guns at unarmed folk."

The people began to push against the restraining redcoats, battling against their strength, and the assaults against the trapped eight became a frenzy.

"You don't scare us!" someone else yelled from within the crowd. "We ain't afraid!"

Achilles gently nudged Connor, pointing at a man with his cane, and murmured, "There."

I followed his gaze to a man dressed in navy clothes, whose tall and strong stature was befitting of an army general, and whose predatory stillness made him seem all the more dark and deadly, like. . .

"Is that my father?" Connor breathed.

"Yes–" Achilles's voice was as low and dangerous as death itself– "which means trouble is sure to follow. I need you to tail his accomplice." He gestured with his cane at the man that Haytham Kenway was speaking to; Charles Lee hovered just behind Kenway like a loyal guard. Their lips seemed hardly to be moving at all, so conspiratorial was the topic of their conversation. "This crowd is a powder keg - we can't allow him to light the fuse."

Connor blanched. "But–"

"But nothing," Achilles hissed.

The Templar men seemed to have finished their conspiring, for they abruptly turned from one another and started to walk in opposite directions, slowly so as not to distract from the screaming and riots.

Connor nodded, and took off after them; he weaved easily through the crowd, every bit as cool and composed as one who had grown up in the streets of Boston, and disappeared down an alley, on the tail of Kenway's accomplice.

I turned to Achilles. "What shall I do?"

"You can fire a gun, correct?" He began to rummage in his pocket.

"Yes." I nodded.

"Well, then." Achilles handed me a flintlock pistol. "You know what to do."

With a sinking heart, I took the gun and cartridges he gave me and loaded it like Ryan had taught me to.

"Don't worry." Achilles gently placed a hand on my shoulder. "The first is always the hardest. It is one thing to fire a weapon; it is another thing entirely to kill a man. Just do it the way you have practiced it." With that, he turned and limped away, leaving both me and Ra–Connor to our own devices.

I closed my eyes. All around me, the crowds surged and fought, pushing the redcoats back, and the soldiers, in turn, pushed them back - yet they did not draw their weapons. I stumbled as I was pushed aside in the heart of the riot.

A heavy hand, smelling suspiciously of fish, slapped down on my shoulder, and when I looked up, it was into the face of a man with eyes like a rabbit and what little hair that was on his head was slicked back with grease. When he opened his mouth, his two front teeth were missing. "Riot's no place for a kid," he said. "Get out of here. I hear tell there's a fire at the Town House."

Though I longed to flee, for fear of death, I couldn't, for Connor's sake. However, this man clearly would not leave me until I did so, and with a pained smile that I hoped resembled a look of terror, I turned tail and pushed my way past the raging crowd. Raising my eyes, I saw one of the soldiers stationed on the rooftop lift his musket and take aim; following his line of sight, it was with a flash of horror that I realised that he was aiming at Connor, who had reappeared at the edge of the crowd.

But before he could shoot, or I could do anything about it, Lee fired a shot into the air.

Chaos broke out among the cornered redcoats. One man, standing concealed by the shadows in the alley behind them, shouted at them: "Damn you, fire!"

Private Hugh Montgomery, panicked and confused by Lee's gunshot, and thinking it was Preston who had given the order, bade his men to fire. The redcoats did not question authority, and they opened fire on the civilians before them. The night sky was cold and dark and starless, and when I looked up I could see flurries of snow being kicked up in the people's desperate attempts to flee.

The soldier on the roof was using the screaming and gunshots as a cover to take aim again. As I lined my pistol up with that man, Ryan's many lessons came back to me in a flood.

Don't hesitate long enough for your mind to doubt. Once you begin to doubt your capability, that is when failure is imminent.

Letting out a slow breath, I steadied my hand and pulled the trigger. I shot straight and true, and the man collapsed with a yelp, clutching his leg; blood began to seep through his pale breeches.

Next to me, a young boy - scarcely the age of fifteen, I would say - fell with a cry, fingers clawing at the gaping bullet wound in his chest.

There was so much blood. Everywhere. Staining the snow. Staining my shoes.

But I could not show fear. Fear was perceived as a sign of weakness - and I would not be weak. So, biting down on the terror buzzing in my veins, I gripped the gun a little tighter and ran, pushing past the screaming wounded and the fearful survivors, into the dark of an alley, where I could now regather my thoughts and figure out a way to save myself and find Connor.