In the mornings she trained her mind – languages and numbers and histories both known and hidden. She sat with the others in a semi-circle around the tutor, ignoring the whispers and the smirks and the laughs if ever she got a question wrong.

The afternoons were for training of a different sort. That was when they fought and climbed and ran and swam. That was when their muscles were stretched and torn and built up again, when their bodies were taught how to move independently of their minds. Muscle memory, the tutors called it. Making fighting second nature. Making killing an instinct.

The girl didn’t like the idea of killing, even while she recognised it would have to be a necessary part of her training. The others claimed they didn’t mind it. Avaunt even insisted she was looking forward to her first kill – then she’d always glance at the girl and everyone else would laugh. Avaunt kept up the act until the morning when she was called away by Quoneel.

When she returned, her robe was drenched in blood and her face was pale. Her eyes were wide and wet. The girl found her later, sobbing quietly in a dark corner. Avaunt looked up and called her Highborn again, called her worse names until the girl walked away and left her to her tears.

The girl wasn’t looking forward to her first kill.

Quoneel took her out of lessons one day, and the girl followed dutifully after him, her belly in knots. They came to a small room where a woman was chained to a wall. She was the first person not dressed in robes that the girl had seen in a long, long time.

“Who are you?” the woman asked, frightened. Her hair was brown. She was slightly overweight. She looked the same age as the girl’s own mother. “What do you want? If you let me go, I won’t tell the police, I swear.”

Quoneel handed the girl a dagger. “Kill her,” he said.

The woman’s eyes widened. The girl looked at the dagger.

“I can’t,” she said.

“But this is what you’ve been training for,” said Quoneel. “When you are a hidden blade, you will claim many lives. This will be your first.”

“But I don’t even know this woman,” said the girl.

“Your name,” said Quoneel. “Loudly now, so the girl can hear.”

“Tanith,” said the woman. “Tanith Woodall. I have a son and daughter and they need me. Please. Please let me go back to them.”

“There,” said Quoneel. “Now you know her. Will taking her life be easier now?”

The girl shook her head. “She hasn’t done anything to me. She hasn’t hurt me. I can’t just kill her.”

“You can. It’s quite easy.”

“But why?”

“Because, as a hidden blade, you must kill those you are told to kill. And I am telling you to kill this woman.”