[center][h1][color=ed1c24]Aziza[/color][/h1][/center]
Aziza left the king, tiny bottle carefully tucked away in one of her secret pockets. Her heart was beating faster, her hands tremble from excitement, but she stopped and calmed herself with a few deep breaths. As thrilled as she was to finally get some action, she could not let that influence her work. There could be no mistakes from now on, this was finally an important task for her, perhaps the most important one in her life so far.

The hallways were filled with people, the festival guests were searching for their rooms, or standing around chatting, discussing the tournament. For this brief moment the servants stopped being invisible – none of the nobles wanted to spend their time wandering aimlessly through the palace in search for their chamber. And why would they, when there were dozens of people ready to fulfil every single one of their whims. Aziza had to hide an impatient frown when a man stopped her and demanded to be guided to his room. A thought of killing him creeped into her mind, dangerously tempting, but she shook it away. He was drunk, and it would take no effort to shove a blade into him, but a discovery of another body might take the attention off the events the king had planned.

She helped him into his room and disappeared into the kitchen before anyone else could stop her. At least the short detour gave her time to think about her plan. First item on the list was finding the Exodus soldier, who struck the bodyguard of princess Evangeline. She needed to identify him and get him somewhere isolated, but without anyone noticing him leaving with a woman – the king demanded that it would look like he was trying to escape. The fact that the Earthicans were supposed to be blamed for his death also limited the choices of a murder weapon – it could not be a knife or a spear, but rather an axe or a sword, or maybe even a bow. Aziza had a small crossbow, but that was too unusual weapon for such task and the arrows were too short to be mistaken for the normal bow arrows. Sword it was then.

With that thought, she snuck out of the kitchen and headed to the armory of the arena. As she expected, some of the weapons were still stored there, their owners being either in the infirmary or relaxing in the spa. The spear with the decoration was one of these weapons, such luck. Aziza quickly scribbled a short note on a piece of paper, attaching it to the spear handle so that only the owner would notice it. One of the shorter Earthican swords disappeared under her gown and then she turned back to the palace.

[center][i]“I saw you attack the redheaded bitch. The barbarians will go after you. Don’t tell anyone, the king would have to punish you, even though you have done nothing wrong. Meet me in the stables three hours after sundown, I can help you. Burn this.”[/i][/center]
[hr]

Few hours later she was hidden on a beam under the stable roof, almost invisible in her black leather attire, fingers tightly wrapped around the hilt of the stolen sword. Her heart was beating slowly, no sign of nervousness or excitement, just a perfect predator waiting for her prey. Of course there was a chance that her plan wouldn’t work, that the soldier would just ignore her note or even show it to someone, but she instinctively knew that it was the right thing to do. The warrior was just a boy, no doubt excited about being able to join the royal guard and not wanting to tell anyone about his inability to follow the tournament rules. The Earthican warriors probably scared the hell out of him, their fierceness and recklessness in a fight going beyond the expectations. Him coming here was the only logical solution to his situation.
One of the horses nickered quietly as the palace back door opened, briefly illuminating the stable and showing a shadow of a man who quickly entered and closed the door behind him. Aziza looked away from the light, to keep her eyes adjusted to the dark. The man coming from a brightly-lit hallway into nearly complete darkness fumbled around, trying not to hit anything. “Hey!” he whispered. “Are you here?”

Aziza quietly jumped down in front one of the occupied boxes. [color=ed1c24]“Over here,”[/color] she replied quietly, changing her voice that in nearly sounded as a male one. She wouldn’t have to, but it will be better not to raise suspicion now. The man made a few careful steps, still not being able to see much. [color=ed1c24]“Come here,”[/color] she whispered to guide him into right position just at the entrance to the box. The horse inside was saddled and there were some coins and supplies for long travel prepared in the saddlebags. ‘Make it look like he was running away,’ her king said and so she did.

The man stumbled and nearly fell down, stopping right beside her, squinting at the horse. “I don’t…” he started, but never got a chance to finish his sentence. Aziza snuck behind him, one hand covering his mouth, muffling the desperate sounds, and the other shoving a sword right into his back. She held him for a few seconds, just until he stopped squirming and then carefully laid the body on the ground next to the horse, who was looking at her completely uninterested. The sword remained in the corpse, although it would be nice to plant it in someone’s chambers, running around the palace with a bloody weapon was probably not a good idea. Plus, she had another job to do.