Author’s note:

It's back! This draft is by no means perfect, but it’s better than the previous version, so—finally! We have an update! (I apologize for the long delay in posting. It’s been a crazy semester.)

All readers kind enough to review, please point out three things in particular as you read: 1) What you like, 2) What you don’t like, and 3) What could be better. At this point, I’m mostly looking for problems with big structures like plot, characterization, and tone.

All honest constructive criticism is welcome. Thanks for reading!

G. London

CHAPTER 1

“Ha! A bloodless whore styling herself an assassin? That’s a load of snakeshit!”

The loud words rang across the room. Heads turned and silence fell, but the speaker went on brazenly. “A woman assassin? Why, women can’t even stand their own blood without panicking, except when they’re supposed to be bleeding.”

Across the room, Astrea Aelinar got to her feet, feeling the blood pound fast and hard in her veins. As the youngest woman in Circle history ever to hold the title of best assassin in Lorien City, she got a lot of masculine slurs about her gender. But such talk usually took place in a dark tavern somewhere, not before the fifty finest assassins in the city.

The meeting hall had turned into a wax museum of figures in black. Plates of hors d’oeuvre and glasses of chilled fruit cider stood forgotten on the round tables scattered about the circular hall. The low fire crackling at the back of the room suddenly seemed very loud. Silver chandeliers flickered quietly, illuminating a roomful of variously startled, amused, and eager faces.

Astrea stalked through the maze of sofas and armchairs dotting the meeting hall, automatically loosening her wrist knives in their sheaths. The faint scent of expensive cigar smoke and burning logs swirled around her.

The stranger was seated in an armchair by the fire at the back of the room, still calmly rattling on about female assassins and females in general. He wore a knife at his waist, and at least four more concealed, but that didn’t concern Astrea much, because his position screamed inept laziness. He was leaned far back in the chair, his arms draped over its sides, and he had his legs crossed at the knee—a vulnerable position, since it took several seconds to get up from.

She assessed him quickly. About mid-twenties, with brown hair and blue eyes. He was built lean, with a dancer’s grace and lightness of bearing, but Astrea also noticed the sleek swells of muscle beneath the sleeves of his black silk shirt, and the effortless speed with which he twirled an empty wine glass between two fingers of his right hand. This was no idiot, however bigoted he might be.

The man gave her body a slow, lingering sweep with knowing eyes, and Astrea’s temper flashed one notch higher. She knew what he saw—what most men saw when they looked at her—a seventeen-year-old woman too exotic to be Larien, too slight to be a good fighter, and too pretty to be anything but a whore. With bronze skin and dark hair, Astrea stood out among the throng of fair gold-haired Larien ladies like a rose among daisies, and most men assumed that she was, like most foreigners of her coloring, either a stage performer or a streetwalker.

This man was, of course, native Larien to the core. Brown hair, blue eyes, light skin—with that complexion, he couldn’t be anything but.

He smiled at her insolently. “Did you want something?”

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Kelon of Arheim,” he said coolly. “You?”

“Astrea Aelinar of Lorien City.”

His lips, unusually full for a man’s, broke into a smile. “So you’re the infamous Astrea. Tell me. Are you truly a member of the Circle here, or are you merely—how shall I put this—offering your services to these good gentlemen here?”

Her fingers itched to strangle him. “Step outside and I’ll show you.”

“Oh, you’re easy. How much do you charge?”

“Step out that door,” she gritted, “or I will make you.”

His eyes met hers, glittering. “Make me.”

Astrea’s knife tore out of its sheath.

“Aelinar! Please!” Master G’Arien wove his way down from the dais at the front of the room, looking highly displeased. “Desist. This is a disruption of the meeting order.”

Kelon tsk’d in mock disapproval, looking at her. “I rather thought the niece of Master G’Arien would have some manners.”

Astrea almost flew at him on the spot. “Coward! If you refuse to settle this in private, then it’ll have to be official. I challenge you to a duel, under the charge of slander.”

“Slander? I committed no slander.”

There was an audible gasp of shock-cum-delight from the spectators.

“A challenge has been issued,” G’Arien said loudly over the hubbub. “Will you accept it?”

Kelon of Arheim smiled, and the room quieted. “Very well,” he said. “It won’t be much of a contest, but I dislike turning down a challenge.”

The room burst into conversation. Astrea shot her adversary a look of contempt, and then turned for the mahogany double doors that led outside.

The courtyard outside was cold for mid April in Lorien City. As the two contestants filed out onto the white marble floor, followed by the rest of the Lorien City Circle, their breath fanned white in the frosty night air.

Astrea had worn her usual daytime outfit to the meeting—black silk trousers, a black silk sleeveless top, and a lower-body knife holster and wrist holsters under that. It was an elegant and beautiful outfit, but very light wear for two o’clock on an April morning. She ignored the goosebumps rippling up and down her arms. The cold would sharpen her senses.

The fifty or so Circle members stood to form a ring about thirty meters across, leaving Astrea and Kelon in the center. The ring was sparse, with large gaps between one member and the next. Its purpose was more symbolic than practical.

Master G’Arien stepped forward to officiate. “To the death or the surrender?” he asked Astrea.

“To the surrender,” Astrea said. She wasn’t going to kill a man just because he’d called her names.

“Weapon?” G’Arien inquired of Kelon.

“Knives.”

G’Arien nodded. “Very well. Are you prepared to begin?”

They both nodded, weapons in hand.

G’Arien paused a moment. Breathless silence filled the arena. “May justice prevail,” he said, and stepped back quickly to merge into the ring. With these three words, the duel began.

They circled.

Astrea slashed out experimentally with her blade. Her enemy blocked, faster than she’d expected. His footwork was excellent, as was his general form—fingers perfect on the hilt, hips at just the right angle, eyes calm but alert. They traded cautious blows again, and then Astrea felt for her center of balance and drove in with an attack.

Steel flew in a lightning exchange. They broke apart after a moment and circled again before Astrea sprang forward, her weapon slashing out in a quick effort to disarm him. He countered the move neatly, nearly jerking her own hilt out of hand.

Astrea’s esteem for him rose. She drew a second knife and evaluated his stance quickly, and then attacked again with both blades whirling. He pulled a second blade as well and counterattacked with an impossibly fast twirling motion that nearly cut both her hands off at the wrist.

Astrea took a step back, and her opponent pressed his advantage, driving her back with fast, complex blade patterns that took every bit of her attention to counter. Steel flashed in the torchlight as they fought, their intricate footwork leaving footprints in the dust of the courtyard, their hearts full of hot, slick adrenaline as they moved in the time-honored assassins’ dance of death.

Onlookers scattered and the dueling ring broke as the duo kept moving, the stranger attacking, Astrea defending herself with effort. They were almost at the courtyard wall. She slipped under his guard and circled around him, switching their positions, but he repeated the move on her seamlessly, trapping her again.

Astrea felt a jolt of anxiety and wondered if, for the first time in five years, she might actually lose a duel. She’d never hear the end of it if she did.

She chanced a split-second glance over her shoulder, and in that moment her opponent struck, knocking one of her knives from her hand. Driven by desperation, she swept her leg under his and managed to trip him slightly. She quickly escaped to the center of the courtyard, where she’d have more room to maneuver.

He turned to face her, and in that moment that Astrea saw an unbelievable opening. He’d raised one hand to scratch the back of his neck, and his whole right side was unprotected.

Astrea instantly sprang at his open rib cage like a tigress, bowling him over onto the ground as her wrists automatically moved to intercept his arms as he tried to cut her. They rolled on the marble floor in a writhing tangle of black silk and silver steel, and then Astrea managed to get gain a slight advantage, and straddled him and laid her blade across his neck. He went still.

Their labored breathing was the only sound in the courtyard. The Circle watched silently, forbidden to interfere until Astrea had named and received the ransom for her opponent’s life. The duelists stared at each other in the torchlight, both tense and damp with sweat.

“Will you surrender?” Astrea asked at last, breaking the fragile silence.

“I surrender.”

Astrea studied him a moment. His expression was flat, revealing nothing. If he was embarrassed or angry, she couldn’t tell. “I set your ransom at three score gold coins,” she said formally, using the traditional formula to phrase her statement. “Will you accept these terms?”

“No.”

Astrea was halfway to letting him up before she realized what he’d said. His face was as stoic as before, but now there was a hint of a smirk in his eyes—a faint twinkle that kindled fury in her heart like a spark in a nest of shredded paper.

“I set your ransom at three score gold,” she repeated. “Will you accept these terms?”

“No.”

Astrea bit her lip, and then decided to let it go. Maybe the man was broke. Besides, she’d already won. The money was a mere formality.

“Fifty gold.” she said.

“No.”

“Forty gold.”

“No.”

“Damn you,” she swore beneath her breath. “I’m not going any lower.”

“Don’t bother. I’m not acquiescing anytime soon.”

Astrea was about to throw back a sharp retort, but his lips broke into a slow, knowing smile that stopped the words on her tongue and sent shivers down her back. “You’re a pretty girl, Astrea,” he said deliberately, loud enough for the whole Circle to hear. “Any other time, any other place, I wouldn’t mind having you on top of me.”

Astrea gasped. There was a murmur of shock from the Circle. Astrea stifled her initial instinct to slice his throat open on the spot, but her hand jerked a little, opening a faint incision.

“How dare you!” she whispered fiercely. “I’ll kill you!”

“You can’t,” he informed her. “It’s a duel to the surrender.”

“Well, you’ll surrender for three score gold or I swear to Guorn, I’ll slice you up to within this close of death!”

He searched her eyes for weakness. Astrea stared back, letting her fury flare out in her gaze. She pressed the blade hard to the side of his throat until she felt the first layer of skin give way to fluid warmth, and his Adam’s apple jerked nervously against the back of her fingers.

“Very well,” he said. “I surrender. My life for three score gold.”

Astrea withdrew her blade and scrambled to her feet as quickly as possible, willing herself not to back off as the man got to his own feet and extended a hand to her. “Truce,” he said.

Astrea stared at his hand. She knew she had to shake it to officially end the duel. But after what he’d said, she couldn’t bring herself to touch him. Not like this, with the whole Circle watching. Besides, he’d already surrendered.

Astrea turned on her heel and strode for the meeting room.

The crowd gasped a second before it happened. A hundred and seventy pounds of sheer muscle went slamming into Astrea’s back with the speed of an attacking panther, and she found herself lying facedown on the marble before she could blink, completely stunned.

She fought a moment to make her paralyzed lungs breathe, and that moment cost her the fight. A deft push turned her onto her back, and then she felt a sharp incision open across her throat, the mirror image of the cut she’d opened herself not thirty seconds ago.

Sapphire blue eyes stared into hers, glittering as though this was all some inside joke. Only it wasn’t. There was a sharp cold blade pressed up against her throat, and her new worst nightmare was smiling down at her like a man-eating cat smiling at its food. Astrea didn’t want to think about what he might say or do between now and the time he named her ransom. Hell and damnation, but this night just kept getting worse.

“Three score gold,” he said.

Astrea blinked. “Excuse me?” slipped out before she could stop herself.

“I set your ransom at three score gold. Will you accept these terms?”

“Yes,” she said quickly, before he realized he’d just set her free and changed his mind.

He let her up, and this time when he offered her his hand and a truce, she took them. His hand was callused but surprisingly polite as it gripped hers. If she hadn’t known better, she might have said there was respect in his grasp.

The Circle broke up and began to drift back into the meeting hall, some members excited about the unusual duel, other angry that the meeting had been set back a half-hour—they had missions scheduled later this night, couldn’t these dastardly hotheads understand that?—and almost all muttering about the fact that Astrea Aelinar, best assassin in Lorien City, had just lost her title and perfect five-year dueling record all in one fell swoop.

G’Arien’s fifteen-year-old apprentice, Nerhid, pulled an ugly face at Astrea and mouthed a dirty word to her as he walked past. Astrea aimed her middle finger at his retreating back.

Master G’Arien hung back as the Circle members filed into the meeting hall—probably to make sure his niece wouldn’t go off and do anything drastic, Astrea thought bitterly. Like kill someone. Or kill herself. She started to push past him into the room, but he put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

“Aelinar, a moment, please.”

“I’m fine,” she said, brushing his hand off.

“Astrea.”

Astrea turned to face him. “G’Arien, really. I’ll be fine.”

He took her arm firmly and steered them both toward where Kelon of Arheim stood in the middle of the courtyard, waiting. Astrea grimaced. If G’Arien wanted the two of them to kiss and make up, he could very well wait for hell to freeze over while he was waiting. The only way it would happen was to her dead body.

“Kelon,” G’Arien said quietly in greeting as they approached. The courtyard was empty now. It was a cold night out, and none of the Circle members had any reason to linger.

“G’Arien,” Kelon returned.

G’Arien smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling into those fine wrinkle lines that had Astrea worrying about his forty-something age more and more these days. “Did you have to make such a debacle of it?”

Kelon shrugged. “She’s fiery.”

“I warned you. You insisted on prodding her anyway.”

“I wanted to see how she’d respond.”

“Excuse me!” Astrea snapped. “I’m not an inanimate object, or deaf, to be discussed like this. G’Arien, who is this? Do you know this man?”

“He’s an old friend.” The two men exchanged a glance that made Astrea feel about twelve years old.

“G’Arien,” she said, “if you’re going to tell me you set this entire duel up, you’d better have a damn good explanation.”

“Kelon will explain everything. Go with him.”