~*~

The Imam was busy talking to someone else when Altaïr came into the mosque and sat down on the carpeted floor leaning against a pillar a little away from where he had sat last time. However, he didn’t begrudge him, he was content to wait and think over the last few months in the relative silence between the gracefully arched stone walls and wooden ceiling staring at the stained glass once again.
He had spent most of what free time he got in the bureau in Jerusalem, taking more missions there than anywhere else, talking with Malik and laughing with him. Everything had run smoothly untill he’d brought back two skins of Arak one day and they’d drunk one each. Malik had been unable to walk so he’d picked him up and carried him to his bed pulling off his boots for him. Then he suddenly found himself swaying worse than before and had sat down, and then laid down. And when he’d woken up in the morning he had a splitting headache and… a Malik in his arms.
“Altaïr,”
Altaïr looked up to the Imam and swallowed taking a deep breath to rid himself of the strange feeling in his stomach.
“I was not sure I would see you again.”
“Nor I, but I need council and you seemed the only one who could give it.”
“I see.” The Imam sat down next to him as before and Altaïr looked around before speaking.
“It is a sin to murder, and a sin to commit adultery but men do these two things all the time and in some cases in the service of their god.”
“That is right, though not for their god do men commit adultery…”
“No, but Generals leading jihad armies have been known to keep prostitutes with them to keep the men busy at nights.”
“True.”
Altaïr swallowed. “If two people like each other is it a sin to commit adultery?”
“Yes if children were born because of it; out of wedlock. Then they would not be provided for…”
“And if there was no chance of any children?”
“Then the question becomes different, you are not hurting anyone so…” The Imam himself checked there was no one around. “I do not believe in the conventional Islam, I believe that the only sins there are, are those which hurt others. If a sin does not hurt anyone I believe it is not a sin.”
“So if you were to murder an evil man?”
“Then it would not be murder, though in justifying murder we must be careful.”
Altaïr turned to face him. “I have murdered many times, some were justified, others not, and yet… the sin which I want to commit I cannot do.”
“Why?”
“Because murder is done everyday by many people, this is outlawed by all and viewed as wrong in whatever circumstances.”
The Imam seemed to be filing through all he had said for some clue as to the sin he wanted to commit.
“What makes it wrong?”
“The qu’ran condemns it, as does the bible…”
“Both texts have been use to condemn and advocate good and evil things, why trust them?”
Altaïr looked at him strangely. “I thought you were an Imam.”
“I am what I am, which is to say: I am devout when it suits me and not so when it doesn’t.”
The assassin blinked. “You’ll be burned one day.”
“No doubt. But until then I can help you, what sin do you wish to commit? Adultery?”