Summer in Ankh-Morpork was most akin to an armpit; hot, reeking, and always at least slightly moist. Much as work didn't tend to get done in the winter, summer was perhaps even slower. Feeling as if one was breathing rancid soup wasn't conducive to productivity.

Jonathan wiped his brow and leaned into the shade of a chimney. He just needed a minute, maybe two, to regroup and analyze the map the eye needed to update. Classes had just gotten out, the the halls of the Guild were a mess of black dots and names. The single one he needed to find was lost somewhere in the shuffle. The chatter certainly didn't help as he sorted so many people that they blended together, and-

She's not here.

"She has to be here. The paper said she was."

The paper was wrong, she's not. Let's move on.

"Look again."

When the eye irritably scanned again, and announced the same result, he moved to another part of the Guild. Perhaps the armory?

No.

He moved to the locker rooms.

No.

The offices?

I told you no.

Jonathan huffed for a moment, then scaled the roof towards Wiggy Charlie. The weathervane creaked loudly, as if he were disturbing it. Jonathan ignored it and made one last search of the Guild. Into every room and hiding place, but she wasn't there.

Only then did he reluctantly move onto the city. Nearly at the end of his scan, and about five blocks off, he found something promising. His finger toyed at the release for his knife blade as he checked it once, and then again, and determined this was likely.

"She lied... That's just rude."

Told you.

He ignored the eye, and another creak from Wiggy Charlie. He could get there, and within a reasonable time frame, too. But he'd really have to run at this point.

For anyone who noticed him, he would have disappeared from the top of the Assassin's Guild only to to reappear upon the Fool's Guild. Once he adjusted his footing upon a shifting gargoyle, he vanished again.

The small blacksmith shop was deafeningly loud due to the pedal grinder, and blisteringly hot from the fire that blazed beside it. The woman, his target, sat with her back to the door. She was fully focused on the knife that sparked against the stone.

Jonathan sized up the room as he unsheathed the dagger. Due to the combined heat, the woman was down to a thin undershirt behind the welding apron that reached up the welding mask that protected her throat. Her more formal blouse was draped on a chair, out of reach like most the plentiful weaponry around them. The knife she worked was short enough that, were he to control the situation, it wouldn't be any sort of threat. Likewise the dagger holstered at her side could be made useless. Only after he calculate his approach did he time his footsteps to the sound of grinding. He froze when she sat up to examine her work. She seemed to relish in running her finger along the blade for an excruciating amout of time, but she finally decided it wasn't done and went back to the stone.

With a single, fluid movement, he dove. His arm looped around her mask and pulled her head back. His knife jammed into her back, at the perfect spot for a quick bleed out.

In the new silence of the shop his blade tinked, gently, against the armor plate under her shirt.

Madame les Deux-Epées pulled a pocket watch out and snapped it open. "I could have been halfway back to Quirm by now. A real client likely would have." She closed the watch and tucked it back into her pocket. "Start blackening the throwing knives. And get that coat off or you'll pass out."

He let her go, and shed his coat onto the same chair as her blouse. "The information I was given was wrong," he said, accusingly.

"Always assume it might be," she said, pointing the knife towards him for emphasis. "Beneficiaries always have their own agenda. They're generally liars, and for all the Guild pretense they see us as tools. You don't give a full backstory to a hammer." " She went back to grinding. "Don't get held up just because you were told something should be when it's not. Your research and instincts are better than that, anyway."

He pointedly ignored the 'I told you so' sparking as he pulled on the elbow-length welding gloves. He took a knife from the pile and began to run it over the fire. "Yes ma'am."

It'd seemed almost inevitable when he was unofficially graduated from Edged Weapons. Over the years, it'd gone from difficult to impossible to find a student willing to spar with him. As classes had practically become private lessons anyway, they moved to training in off hours. As they came closer to finals, those lessons changed to mock inhumations so she could spend more time preparing for her Run. Which meant, likewise, Jonathan generally finished his sessions doing the same.

"Think I could finish the Run?" He asked. He placed the first knife off to the side before getting another.

"Nobody Runs until they're 18," she said, and picked out a new dagger to work on. "I was in the room when you were told."

"But do you think I could finish it?"

"I think you'd be killed on principle, and then I'd lose my job for not stopping you."

"What if I swear I'll stay home?" When she gave him a hard look, he held his hand up in the traditional Assassin hand signal. "I swear."

Deux-Epées chewed over both his sincerity and abilities for a long while, and finally said, "I'd give you a 45% chance."

Jonathan's face screwed into a pout. "That's all?"

"That's all. And that's a good spot to be in for 16." She sheathed the dagger. "The next two years are about getting that up to 80% at least."

"That's still really low."

"It's supposed to be." She picked up the knife he'd put off to the side, and pointed to a glistening bare patch. "Being able to notice tiny, seemingly insignificant things like this is a big part of that number." She passed it back. "That's how I managed to graduate from a school that won't teach girls."

Jonathan put the knife back over the fire. "So, then how'd they find out?"

"After Danpipe got himself impaled, I was the first choice for the job. They decided a ball my family was throwing would be the perfect time to offer it to me. And there I was, full ball gown cut to about-" She clucked her tongue and motioned over her heavy apron before getting another blade to sharpen. "They even had the gall to ask me 'when I got those' and-"

She noticed where his eyes had stuck, and used a finger to force his chin up to look her in the eye.

"Don't get stupid about women," she said, fiercely. "Men go broke, they lose their reputations, because they're following their dicks around. And the ones who underestimate women on top of that-" She snapped a knife into view. "End up horribly dead. Are we clear?"

"Yes Ma'am..."

"Good." With a twist of her wrist, she spun the knife around to hand him the hilt. "Back to work."

The night of the Run, the city positively crawled with prospective graduates. Out of courtesy no Guild-backed apartment was directly in the path of a Run, but realistically there were periodic footsteps on near every roof.

Jonathan lay on his bed, forcibly, and scowled at the ceiling. He was fairly sure he'd seen the Madame on an opposite roof checking on him earlier that evening so he was just stuck in his sweltering apartment.

He would have loved to head out, and prove the 45% was ridiculously low. But, alas, no amount of thinking about the rules had found a way around the fact that he'd vowed to stay at home overnight. He'd be far more careful about his words next time.