Isabella stepped up to the edge of the tower, feeling a stiff breeze blow past her face. The air was full of the smells of the festival in the square below, a mixture of garlands of flowers, street cooked food, people's bodies, and alcohol. It was mostly alcohol. Isabella stepped up onto the parapet, pushing her finger-tip length cloak behind her with a single sweep of her arm. Silver trinkets, some decorative and other containing poisons, clinked from the movement. They were attached to a leather bandolier and a thick, hardened leather belt.
She crouched, resting her forearms on her thighs, and gaze over the jumbled mess of the crowd below her. Inhaling through her nose, Isabella let the air open up a space in her chest, which was full of the pulse from her heart. It was fast. Down there, in that tangle of color and smells and clamor, was a man she was going to kill.
She lifted a hand, pulling down her hood slightly lower, the fine, navy cloth edged with an expensive trim. She felt the hem slide against the quarter mask she wore over her left eye, hiding a scar that was a result of a poor choice in her past. Her focus slipped away to the memory, fuzzy from drink and pain, a glinting dagger hovering over her eye, blood dripping onto her pupil and sliding down her face, mingling with tear tracks.
A flash of gold and a sudden loud burst of laughter, pomp, and circumstance snapped Isabella out of her trance, and she tucked escaped strands of brunette hair back into her hood. In the corner of her eye, she could see her blades stored in the underside of her bracers, waiting for her to twitch her wrist in just the right way to bring them to bear. He was here. It had taken her a lot of patience, time, and effort to generate the illusion that he was safe, to make him feel untouchable. She had hired the guards that stood around him to put themselves in a position to be hired by him for the festival.
He was going to die, and Isabella would take great care to not dirty her clothing with his foul blood.
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