Ahead was the Hôtel de Ville, the town hall of Paris. It's absurdly intricate architecture was a testament to the state of France: attention to the petty and fanciful for the elite while the peasants starved. There was already a mob forming in a 'u' around one of its doors, though, which Élise found intriguing. She approached. They carried pitch forms, hoes, and a few even carried muskets.

She began to squirm her way through the grimy crowd. She did not quite look like a peasant, but she was a sister in their cause, and certainly bringing the best weapons.

There was her mark, Jacques de Flesselles, clad in a blue and gold coat and powdered wig, two young soldiers pointing muskets in opposite direction to stave off the peasants. He had a clear path to the door, the rioters forming a horse-shoe, rather than a circle. However, Élise guessed it was locked, and the others inside were not going to risk opening the doors to let him. The once-mighty were too afraid to even protect their own.

She knew the dilemma in the poor soldiers' minds: the people around them were threatening, but as soon as they fired their muskets they would become vulnerable and the people emboldened. The rioters had a similar dilemma, though. The first one to attack would almost certainly be killed.

She was closer to the soldier facing the opposite side of the crowd. She saw an opportunity, a trick she had been taught in her last year of Assassin training. She would be the one to draw first blood.

She watched the further soldier, who surveyed her side of the horse-shoe. His gaze and musket point tip darted sporadically across the crowd, staying at one point for no more than a second. When it was furthest from her, she pledged, she would thrust herself into the danger. Though it took remarkable and unfettered discipline to-

Now!

She ran into the eye of the storm, and after a quarter second of vulnerability grabbed the nearer soldier by the neck, rotating him, and taking out her pistol.

The other guard fired into her meat shield. She felt the grotesque impact of the musket ball against him and then fired her pistol. It missed Jacques but took down the other guard.

She immediately let the heavy body drop disgracefully against the ground, dropped her pistol, and pounced on her mark, stabbing him.

It had been a marvelous display, turning centuries of honed Assassin wisdom into a deft show of deathcraft in front of masses hungry for freedom and justice.

Withdrawing her now bloodied blade, the mighty noble was now lying upon the dirty city streets, bleeding onto the cobble stone.

"Why did you betray us, Jacques?" she asked.

"Betray you? I'm no traitor," the defeated man said. "That's why I lay here dying. Your rabble tried to bully me into betraying my kind, and I was courageous enough to refuse."

Courageous? The audacity. He sided with the self-pampered aristocracy, those who bribed men like him out of morals.

"You may not have betrayed your king, but you betrayed the people of France, who starve while the nobles feast, all as our nation spirals into deeper debt."

"I've been in both worlds," he retorted from his dirty place on the ground. "I was not born into nobility. How could I betray those who gave me my place in high society?"

"You were never a peasant, Jacques. You know only one."

"No. You do."

With those words, he let out a final sigh and his eyes froze, the cobble stone around him now thoroughly crimson. She took out a handkerchief, and wiped his blood upon it.

The crowd around cheered. Élise was proud of her display. Her mentor would have been proud, if she were still fighting on his side.

Élise stood and walked back through the onlookers, who rushed eagerly to have their way with the body. She was not a fan of corpse desecration, but she knew she could muster no proper argument to dissuade them. It was an ugly thing, but the harder one tugged at a bow, the harder the arrow would fly in the opposite direction.

She was going to head back to the chateau. What a day it had been. The tides had shifted with the power of a hundred moons. She had more than earned some rest. France would never be the same.

She wondered if Grand Master Francois would still be there when she returned. It was not his permanent residence, as Grand Master he simply made frequent stops.