Silver Shadows - Elaine Cunningham [5]
Oddly enough, however, most of the illegal activities of Zazesspur were conducted from the better parts of town. The School of Stealth-a school of the fighting arts which was a thinly veiled front for the powerful assassins' guild-was housed in a sprawling complex at the edge of the city. Intrigue was always in fashion, and the going price for an assassin's services was high: So, however, was the price on an assassin's life. Arilyn Moonblade walked lightly down the narrow back-alley street that led to the women's guildhouse, making no more sound than the narrow shadow she cast. She was a broadsword's width short of six feet tall, with raven-dark hair that hung in careless waves about her shoulders and eyes of an unusual dark blue flecked with bits of gold-beautiful eyes that might have inspired bardic odes, had they not been so wary and forbidding. Pale as moonlight and alert as a stalking cat, Arilyn had about her a tense, watchful air and the too-thin, too-taut look of one who seldom paused for either food or sleep. For an assassin, the choices were few and straightforward: constant vigilance, or death.
The half-elf had been a member of the assassins' guild for several months, and she was no longer considered an easy mark. Zazesspur's professional killers were strictly ranked, and the sash of pale gray silk that belted Arilyn's waist proclaimed her to be a fighter of the highest skill. But there were still those who refused to believe that a woman-much less a half-elven woman from the barbarous Northlands-could defend the Shadow Sash she wore.
The system for advancement within the guild was simple: an ambitious assassin merely killed someone of higher rank and took his sash. Arilyn had defended her rank more times than she cared to admit. When forced to do so, she fought with an icy skill and an even colder fury that was becoming legendary among her associates. Not one of them, however, suspected that the half-elf wanted nothing more than to be rid of her dark-and largely undeserved-reputation. Nor would they ever know. Solitary and cautious by nature, with each grim challenge Arilyn became more intensely watchful and more fiercely alone.
Thanks to several months of hard-won survival, Arilyn's instincts were as keenly honed as a bladesinger's sword. She didn't need to hear footsteps or glimpse a shadow to know she was being followed. Nor did she expect such things. Silence was the first lesson taught to fledgling assassins, and the faint light coming from the high, narrow windows of the women's guild-house up ahead cast all shadows behind her. Yet Arilyn knew she was being hunted. She could not have been more certain of this if the stalker had announced his intent with blaring horns and the yapping of hounds.
Even so, several heartbeats passed before she caught sight of him. Although half-elven, Arilyn had in full measure the keen sight of elvenkind: sharp detail, long range-and wide sweep. Behind her, at the outermost edge of her peripheral vision, she saw a tall, broad figure, cloaked and cowled into anonymity, rapidly closing the distance between them.
No one had reason to walk this particular path but Arilyn and her sole female colleague, for the tall, narrow tower that housed the women's guildhouse was the humblest and most remote building in the complex. It seemed likely, therefore, that the man behind her had career advancement in mind.
But Arilyn walked steadily on, giving no sign that she was aware of the assassin's presence. Just a few paces ahead was a walkway that branched off from the path, leading into the even narrower alley that ran between the high courtyard walls of the opulent men's guild-house and the council hall. The attack would surely come there.