What kind of person would want to be an Assassin?
Well, judging from the enrollment numbers, a sizeable percentage of the population. But so many of those were just rich boys and girls whose parents wanted them to have a good education (and, since they were noble, knowing how to stick a knife in someone wouldn't hurt.) They were the sort of people whose parents regarded being pelted with rocks as a good way of building character, and would probably come out, if not alive, then at least capable of inheriting.
But to want it?
Strangely enough, you didn't get too many of the really crazy types these days. They still had a holiday to honor that Teatime fellow, but anyone who aspired to be like him would probably drop out in disappointment. You couldn't kill messily, or kill bystanders, or take pleasure in a kill- pride, yes, but not pleasure- and for most of the nutters, that was all the fun.
But someone who really wanted to be an Assassin would be someone like Jocasta Wiggs. Not crazy, uninterested in the benefits of a fine education, but someone who couldn't imagine herself doing anything else. A true Assassin could turn herself on and off like a bit of machinery, knowing that targets were not truly people. Murder was a crime, but removal of expensive obstacles was a craft.
Her first kill was the Selachii boy. How he'd ever managed to get out of jail was a mystery, but it couldn't have been by using his wits. Anyone too stupid to realize that the drug he'd slipped a girl in a bar was a fatal overdose deserved to have the cups switched. When he fell, gasping for breath but receiving only Jocastas's violet perfume, she calmly finished the rest of his drink. Good gods, had he really thought mint would go well with that? A boy with no sense of taste, along with brains or morals.
The Watch would not come after her. They didn't like Assassins, seeing them as only highly paid thugs rather than necessary exterminators of the world's pests, but they knew they were legal. Jocasta was usually glad about that, remembering her encounter with the lead thief-taker and the humiliation that had resulted.
But sometimes…well, sometimes it would be nice to have a worthy opponent. Not that some targets wouldn't be clever, but they wouldn't be thinking the way she did. Vimes had known what she would try, even if he hadn't known his life was no longer in danger with the Assassins. Much as smell of that awful sewage had stayed in her nostrils all day, she could see why he was necessary.
It would be several years ago that she'd met him- the lilacs were in bloom again. Jocasta idly pulled off a bloom, thinking about the Watchmen- and women, nowadays. They'd have to be people who could force themselves not to turn off when confronted by something that didn't serve any purpose alive. They'd have to think of everyone as having worth.
As Jocasta unconsciously crushed the lilac petals, she wondered what kind of person would want to be a Watchman.