The Assassins of Genua
Being an account of the return of the illustrious Guild of Assassins to the stricken city of Genua
Characters
Anthony Corella, Master Assassin
Lucrezia di Genua, Assassin
Catherine Hough, Gerrald Provencher, and Samir Veshandra, Apprentice Assassins
Emberella, Queen of Genua
Nicolas Serpenti, Prime Minister to the Queen
Signorina Maria, Noblewoman, College Headmistress
Marco, Werewolf
In the city of Genua, it was common knowledge that the Assassins had left when the Duc and Lady Lilith had taken over. This was not entirely true. While, by all observable fact, there was not a Guild of Assassins in the city, the facts were never as simple as "common knowledge" would make them out to be. The Guild had been disbanded, and no Assassins in the city plied their trade, true enough. But did they all leave? Would they ever all leave a city as rich and complex and ultimately resilient as Genua? Especially when Ankh-Morpork was so far away?
In fact, many had enjoyed it in the beginning. Lady Lilith had style. She certainly cleaned up the city quite a bit, and any Assassin likes a clean city, as there's less muck around to make their inevitably shiny leather boots less shiny. But then there had been the mirror business. The wizards left in the city—weren't many of those either—said Lilith used them for magic and it was for the good of the kingdom, really, that others weren't allowed them.
The Assassins had, at that point, decided "Bugger the good of the kingdom!" They kept their hand in politics as a rule, but it had occurred to them that nobody sane kept their hand in a wasps' nest.
They also disliked being hauled up before the court for, on various occasions, not wearing a hood, not meeting in disreputable taverns, and carrying a sword that was deemed much too heroic, whatever that meant. And when one had been asked to change his name to Lord Darkblade it was all over.
"I've no objections to the name as such," Joshua Slump had said at the final meeting of the Genuan Assassins, "it's being told I've got to have it. Like I'm a worse Assassin if I don't. And I'm a poisoner, it'd be a bit silly wouldn't it? You know, I don't think she's going to be able to make Assassins be what she wants. You want to hazard any guesses as to what she'll do instead? I've got one, and it isn't a nice one."
"My vote, gentlemen," said a voice, "is that we leave before we are forced out."
Everyone turned. The one who'd said that was a tall woman with long black hair. If you were charitable, or if you noticed that she was carrying three blades, you could call her a handsome lady, all things considered (especially those things that were pointy and metallic), but she was not gifted with much in the way of classic Genuan beauty. Over her nearly-black brown eyes sat a pair of thick black eyebrows that reminded people of the fuzzy caterpillars you got when it was going to be a bad winter. Her nose was long, her lips thin, and her jaw square. But she had a beautiful voice, and far more important to the seldom-impressed men in the room, she was the only woman to be accepted to the Assassins' Guild of Genua.
In this dark council room, a dangerous woman had an attraction that a merely beautiful one never could.
"You're…new…aren't you?" asked the Guild master, Lord Corella.
"My name, sir, is Lucretia."
An excellent name, really. Though perhaps it would be better if she swapped that T out for a Z. (She later, much to Lord Corella's satisfaction, did exactly that.)
"Lucretia what?"
"Lucretia."
"Do you not have a last name? Everyone's got one."
"Everyone has an arse as well, and I am not revealing mine."
"Fair enough. You're an Assassin, after all."
"Yes. Though I fear that to stay here I must stop being one."
"You plan to stay?"
"I was born in Genua. My family are still here. My husband fears he would not fit in in Ankh-Morpork, despite my telling him that everything fits in in Ankh-Morpork."
Lucretia did not talk about her husband very much. To tell the truth, Lucretia did not talk about anything very much. But that was the thing, wasn't it, in the Guild? In the end, you were all you had, you and your sword and your crossbow and your throwing knives and your poison rings. You didn't go around making friends with other Assassins. You made friends with people in quieter professions, and hoped that they would only be mourning you after a long and successful life, though you doubted they would. You certainly didn't marry another Assassin, although that was only a consideration recently, with the acceptance of young ladies into the Guild school. Lucretia certainly hadn't married an Assassin.
In fact, she'd married a werewolf, which was the other reason she didn't talk about him very much.
"I daresay Ankh-Morpork has seen stranger sights, but I understand that most people don't want to pack up and leave their home cities. Even I would rather not leave. But the Guild ought to be disbanded," said the Master. "It will soon come to pass that either we can stay in Genua or we can be Assassins, but we cannot be Assassins in Genua."
"What will you do if you stay?" asked Joshua. "I'm thinking of becoming an apothecary. I already know something about poisons and medicines, and I won't sell really nasty poisons to disreputable people." He left off the part about how Assassins, of course, were not disreputable.
"I am going to be a schoolteacher," said Lucretia solemnly. She didn't look much like one. Part of this was that she was spinning a dagger with one hand. It was common enough behavior. It was why Assassin meetings never went too long. When the majority of attendees use edged weapons to fidget, you don't give them a reason.
"What? But I'm sure the doting parents of Genua won't want an Assassin teaching!"
"A school has already accepted me. I will be in one of the finest schools in the city, in fact, and what better way to keep a finger on the pulse of the city?"
"Getting into the palace strikes me as a good idea," said Joshua.
"That is because you are thinking too directly. Any work in the Palace would become hazardous to me, and what I could learn would not be worth that. But seeing regular—if slightly well-off—people every day, those who feel and see the changes Lady Lilith is making—there, I can learn in peace. And when it is safe for our Guild to return, I will let someone in Ankh-Morpork know."
"You have my thanks, Lucretia. I am leaving," the Master said. "I may return, but I am taking my wife and the youngest of my children to Ankh-Morpork. The oldest of my sons, Anthony, is working there, and can find a place for us."
"In what profession?" asked Lucretia. She knew.
"Ours," said the Master. The first-born son of an Assassin was always an Assassin. It was why the wives of Assassins had more children quickly, or prayed for girls.
"Of course," said Lucretia. "I wish you all the best. Now, I think I shall get home. It is full moon tomorrow night. Preparations must be made."
Lucretia considered that on the whole she was lucky. Oh, the Guild disbanding was rotten luck, and she hoped that her pitiful record—only five inhumations, and one on an elderly woman—would have an asterisk next to it in the Guild yearbook leading to a note that specified "Her Guild was disbanded." But she was alive and well, and still quite young. With any luck, this Lady Lilith would be a flash in the pan and Lucretia would be back to her proper work within a few years. And she dearly loved her husband, Marco, despite his little problem.
She got home that night to find Marco, who was a well-built man with curly black hair when he wasn't a wolf, which, really, was most of the time, pacing the floor with a turkey leg in his hand, tearing at it viciously. She yanked it away from him and said, "Marco, stop that, it isn't even full moon yet, you know better."
"Sorry Lucretia. Actually that wasn't a werewolf thing, I just hadn't eaten all day. Too busy at work." He worked as a builder. It had been something of a scandal when Lucretia had married him, in fact. While she hadn't actually been expected to marry an Assassin, she'd been expected to at least marry someone wealthy or influential. Not someone who worked with his paws—oh, I'm so sorry, I meant hands. But she had persevered (and been very happy to discover that one of the disapproving matrons of Genuan high society coincidentally had a contract out on her) and thought that she was lucky to have someone who was only a wolf some of the time.
"I see. Oh. You know how I asked that academy if I could teach there? I'm going to have to. My Guild voted today to disband."
"I'm so sorry."
"I am too. You know, I wonder why nobody thought of hiring us to kill Lady Lilith."
"Don't you mean inhume her?"
"Inhume is too polite a term." Lucretia took a dagger out of her formidable cleavage and began slicing at the turkey leg, muttering imprecations about Lady Lilith as she did so. Even Marco, who had good hearing just before he became a wolf, couldn't hear much.
Finally, she handed the meat back to him on a plate. "At least eat like a civilized person," she said. "I'm going to make your bed in the shed ready. And put some chickens in there." Lucretia always locked Marco in the shed once he turned into a wolf. Unfortunately, the shed had enough gaps that the moonlight shone through and he didn't change back, but she could make sure that the only things he killed in there were things she'd bought. And she never locked him in too early. She enjoyed spending time with him in that day just before he had to change, when he was unmistakably human but considerably more bloodthirsty and noticeably hairier. Perhaps there was an upside to this whole disbanding thing. After all, schoolteachers worked much more regular hours than Assassins. That was Lucretia's last thought before she fell asleep on her last day as an Assassin.
Author's Note: In Witches Abroad, which this takes place directly afterward, Genua was like New Orleans, but in every other book it's been Italy. I tried to fuse the two together, but I've drifted towards Italy, mostly because I can come up with more Italian names than French ones.