For all that they both followed the Sunless Way the Thieves' and Assassins' Guilds were, in attitude and priorities, near-diametric opposites. For the Thieves, violence was a last resort and physical harm being done to a target was an offense punishable by suspension from the Guild. For the Assassins, murder was an art and the purloining of a target's possessions while on a job was the gravest breach of honour.

Frequently the cause of strife between the Guilds, such differences were expressed in physical form by their respective GuildHalls. The home of the Thieves was a many-storied building with little in the way of ornamentation and with its deadliest traps on the outside -- the challenge to a would-be intruder lay in getting inside. The home of the Assassins was a sprawling, single-storied manor, built all of mica-flecked gray marble and with deadly guards prowling each and every corridor within -- the challenge here lay in getting back out, alive.

But, then, the slender, black-clad interloper currently perched on a window sill, aiming a miniature crossbow at the sleeping form of the head of the Assassins' Guild had no intention of leaving alive, anyway.

*****

All I have to do is pull the trigger, and it's done. Easy. Too easy! He hasn't stirred, but I can't really be within bowshot of the head of the Assassins' Guild without him knowing it.

I pull the trigger anyway, diving to the side even as the bolt flies towards that startlingly blond shock of hair. Of course, it hits nothing but a suddenly bare pillow, and a knife cuts through the air where my head had been a moment ago.

Before I can blink, I'm knocked flat on my back, with him pinning me with his superior weight. My head hits something, and all I can see are painful red stars dancing across a field of velvet black.

As my vision clears, I find it filled by pale gray eyes, his gaze first cold with anger, then lighting slowly with... curiosity? Perhaps even respect.

A single drop of blood wells up under the tip of my knife, trickling down his pale throat slowly. His grip on my wrist tightens and my fingers go numb, letting go their hold on my knife. I drew blood. So close... if the fall hadn't stunned me...

The fingers of his free hand curl around my neck, slipping under the high collar of my shirt. His littlest finger strokes along the big vein in my throat, almost a caress until I feel the sharp, brief pain of a pinprick.

Everything goes dark...

*****

Something cool and soothing is being spread over my burned arm... but I can barely feel it. Am I underwater? I remember that being underwater felt like this. Floating... the world so far away, just a confused blur in the distance. But, no, I can breathe. I can't be underwater. Just to be sure, I open my eyes.

"Ah. Awake so soon? Well, if you've been sneaking around and shooting mini-bows with a burn like this slowing you down, you must be a damn tough little bugger, this is true." His voice is like warm honey... I want to just lie here and listen to him forever. Everything about him, really, reminds me of honey... golden hair, golden voice, sweet gentle hands. An angel?

But... no... I know him. Don't I? I'm swimming for the surface, but it's too far away. Where am I?

"What did you this with, anyway? A hot poker? What a mess. There are easier ways to get rid of a Guild tattoo, little ex-thief." Guild? Ex... thief... no! Son of a bitch Assassin! He drugged me! My mind clears... and my body still refuses to obey. I try to sit up, to roll away from him, and manage only a little twitch. He's laughing. "Ahh, there's that spirit of yours. I was starting to wonder if maybe you were enjoying the drug a little too much."

"Bastard..." My tongue trips over the word and it comes out a barely audible mumble. But he knows what I meant.

He leans closer, the candlelight glinting off his eyes with all the cold brightness of sunlight on ice. "Hardly that. Just pragmatic. Last night, the head of the Thieves' Guild was murdered. Tonight, an ex-thief appears in my bedroom, intent on killing me. I suspect the incidents are related. Am I wrong?" His fingers, still sticky with the balm he put on my burn, trail lightly up the inside of my leg. Oh, God... I'm naked. How did I not notice that I'm naked?

And as my thoughts are on my state of undress, my mouth delivers betrayal most foul. "No, you're not wrong." I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- the bastard! He wrings the entire sordid tale from me that way, his gentle touches sending my mind pirouetting off into distraction, leaving the drug free to set my mouth to answering any question he puts to me.

Kouri. Yonaka. All the pain and horror of the last few days comes spilling out, and still he keeps asking for more. But every time he comes back to the subject of Kouri's body, a faint frown tugs at his lips, and he asks the same question over again, phrased slightly differently. Am I sure I saw what I thought I saw? Of course I'm sure!

Finally, after he's asked half a dozen times and gotten the same answer each time, he sits back on his heels and scowls at me thunderously. "You can't possibly be lying to me, with that much Dreamdust in your blood, but what you're saying makes no damn sense!"

If it's an act, it's more than good enough to fool my drugged my brain. He seems genuinely upset by what I've told him. And that makes no sense to me. Kouri was mutilated at the hands of the Assassins; how could this man, their leader, not know about it?

"I slit that man's throat myself. It was a quick, clean kill. He deserved no less!" The Assassin chews absently on one fingernail, a nervous habit that somehow convinces me, even more than his words, that he's telling me the truth. Then his gaze turns back to me, more intense, more heated than I would ever have thought anything gray could be. "Who among the Thieves handled the body before it was put on display for his wake?"

It's hard to think, with his drug still doing its dirty work, but eventually I remember. "Only Yonaka. No one else. Our medic died last month and we have yet to replace him."

That brings another frown to his face. "Then it happened here, on my end. One of my people..." his features twist, disgust warring with anger, "One of my people mutilated and raped a dead body."

His gaze travels slowly up my legs, speculative now. I do not like that look in his eyes. I like even less his next words.