First of all, if you have not finished reading The Malloreon, DO NOT CONTINUE!! DON'T READ THIS STORY, DON'T EVEN FINISH READING THE AUTHOR'S NOTE! If you have finished and know about...ah...Silk's unexpected announcement...please continue. The idea for this came about because I was wondering what the nickname of Silk's and Velvet's children would be. Since both silk and velvet are a type of cloth, I figured their children's nicknames would be too. Hence, the existence of Satin. I do not own any of the characters, ideas, or settings in the Belagariad or Malloreon.
Silk was teaching his daughter, Satin, who had already achieved a nickname from her great uncle, Javelin, the fine art of killing by knife.
"No, no," he said to the overeager six-year old. "You're holding it all wrong. If you stab someone with the knife at that angle, it will terribly messy, and will be that much more work to clean up."
"If we're killing someone, why do we have to clean up?" She asked, puzzled.
"Always get rid of the evidence." Silk answered importantly. Before he could continue, however, his wife walked into the room.
"Are you teaching our daughter your foul trade again, Kheldar?" The Margravine Liselle asked him teasingly.
"Of course not, dear," he answered mildly. "Would I do that?"
She laughed, and embraced him fondly. "Your brother has a job for us." She told him.
"Oh?" He said, feigning disinterest. His nose, however, began to twitch slightly at the mention of a "job."
"Yes," Velvet replied. "He wants someone…shall we say, eliminated."
"Does he now? And what is he willing to charge for this service?"
Velvet chuckled. "Why don't you take that up with him?" She suggested.
"I believe I will, my dear, I believe I will."
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"You would charge your own brother when he's doing a favor hiring you?" Urgit, King of the Murgos, asked incredulously. "There are many other assassins here in the palace, and I could get any one of them to do it for me. Yet, thinking you would be offended if I didn't, I called you instead of hiring someone closer to home."
"Don't you know me well enough by now to now that I always charge for my services?" Silk asked his brother, genuinely curious. "Besides, business is business. Now, who did you want me to kill?"
"Must you say that?" Asked Urgit in a pained voice. "It sounds so…crude."
"Why say anything else, when that's exactly what we're doing? Now then, is he some foreign official, or maybe just an overly annoying Murgo? Or maybe more than one? I find Murgos troublesome, and if you want me too, I will gladly depopulate all of Murgodom."
"And leave me to rule over the bugs? I think not. At any rate, the gentleman in question is a very shady official supposedly from the Thulls. However, he is most definitely not a Thull himself, and his propositions are far too intelligent to have come from the Thulls. I suspect he may be Dagashi."
Satin, who had been listening with interest before now, found the details of this Dagashi's incipient demise rather tedious, and soon became bored. After a while she heard loud voices from the hall, and decided to investigate. She opened the door a crack to see who it was that was causing such a commotion as to be heard through the thick, gilted doors.
Whatever she had expected, it was not this. The Dagashi that her uncle had so recently described was standing before the door, commanding to see the king.
"The King is attending to other business right now. The Thullish ambassador will have to wait." The doorman said coldly. No one noticed as Satin snuck quietly into the hall.
"I will see the king!" The Dagashi blustered. "If you do not let me through this very instant, I'll—."
"You'll what? Run home crying to your master? Your master is hardly more than a dog, and his fear of the King will keep him from responding to your petty complaints." The doorman responded, returning to his post. "Now, will you return to your quarters, or must you be assisted?"
Satin, hidden from sight by a large tapestry hanging on the wall, saw the Dagashi draw his knife. The doorman, who hadn't seen the weapon, was his obvious target, and then anyone who was on the other side of the door. Alarmed, Satin felt through her clothes for something to use as a weapon, or at least to warn the guard. All she found, however, was the knife her father had been teaching her with. Clutching it tightly, she stepped from behind the tapestry.
"Stop." She said in a small voice. The Dagashi whirled around to face her, and the guard started in surprise. Then, seeing the knife in her hand, the Dagashi panicked, and ran towards her, intending to vanish down the hallway and escape the palace grounds before he was arrested. Instead he found Satin's knife. He gaped at it in shock as the slim blade slipped through his chest, and spluttered in protest. Then he toppled over, dead. Satin reached down and pulled her knife free of the man. Then the door opened, and she heard running footsteps.
"What the—." She heard her uncle's shocked voice. Then her father spoke.
"You still had the wrong angle." He said critically, looking at the pool of blood spreading from the man's chest out across the floor. "What did you do with the knife?"
She showed the still bloody blade to him. He nodded in approval.
"Good. Now, you must be very careful not to put a dirty blade back in its sheath. I usually carry around a few handkerchiefs to clean them off with. Wipe the blade, like so…" As Satin received an impromptu lesson in how to clean a knife, she had no idea that her education as a spy, thief, and assassin was off to a very strange, and very exciting, start.