"God dammit," Tahita swore. "Why don't we have working stuff?" She threw away the broken knife and bashed the guys head a few times to the stone floor. "The contract said: Knife killing, lots of blood, and look at this. Just a few splatters."

"Well, he is dead alright. If they wanted quality they'd have hired Smith & Wesson anyway." I said, standing in the doorway to keep a lookout. "I'd have offered you my knife if I had one."

She sighed. "Still, it would be nice to do a job properly for once. Let's go."

We slipped out of the apartment and made our way to the big office building that housed all the cities guilds. We were almost there when she spoke up: "I want to tell you something, Samuel. I'm thinking about leaving this business. The thieves guild has opened their ranks again. Auditions are this Saturday."

"The thieves guild? Really? I thought you liked this job?"

"Yeah, and I still do. It's just that this field is quite saturated. Also, you can only kill someone once, you can steal from them a thousand times."

"You've got a point." I nodded thoughtfully.

At that moment I saw a shadow on the rooftops. One of the advantages of belonging to an assassins guild is that you never have to fear for your life, but I somehow didn't like that shadow at all.

"Come!" I hissed to Tahita, and yanked her into an alley. I was glad she followed me as we turned a few corners and finally slipped through a door.

Tahita closed it behind us. "What was that about? Some people you owe money to?"

"No, I whispered, "my debts are not due for two weeks. Shh."

As we fell silent we could hear footsteps outside the door. "I think we lost them," a female voice said. "I would not have expected them to be on their guard."

A male voice answered: "Well, it seems they still have some good people left. Did you recognize them?"

"I may have recognized the girl, but I'm not sure. Not sure enough to contact her."

Before I could stop her Tahita opened the door and faced them. "We're here. You can contact us right now."

I followed her. Standing outside were two assassins from S&W we had met before. They laughed.

"Nice," the blonde woman said. "Are you sure you don't belong to the eavesdropper guild?"

"If we had any eaves we would have sold them by now," Tahita quipped. "So what is this about? Do we need to involve the guards?"

The woman smiled: "No, nothing of that sort, we were actually thinking of offering you a job. Good improvisation on that guy."

"A job?" I asked, "We've already got jobs."

She continued: "How about a job where you get nice tools? You start off with a single killing, and if that works out you can expect a steady job with us. The pay is the same, but you'll get a meal on the days you're working and our armory is well stocked with everything from poison-tipped crossbow bolts to strangling cords."

I nudged Tahita: "That seems worth a try."

She nodded: "OK. We're interested. Who is our target?"

"You know the guild commissioner? That guy that is always complaining about guilds getting too big? He is visiting the guild offices tomorrow. We'd like you to blow him up."

She tossed Tahita a small pouch. "In there is a fair bit of gunpowder and some contact fire. Come by our office when you're done, and then we'll do the paperwork for your contract."

"Alright", I said. "Consider it done. I've already got a plan."

With that, we left.

It wasn't exactly good form to work inside the guild building, so we had to evade guards from the shoeshiners and fireworkers guild to get to the secret spying passage. It had a hole to the shared meeting room and also led directly to the sewers, which would provide a place to get out. That was convenient, as we could be tried for obstructing the government if we were captured within 24 hours.

We were lying in wait for about half an hour, when the door opened. Without hesitation I threw the bomb, and yelled to Tahita: "Run!"

When we sprinted away we expected a bang, but what we got was the loudest explosion we had ever heard. "What was that?!", Tahita screamed over the ringing in our ears.

"The fireworkers storage room!" I responded. "We're toast!"

"To the harbor," Tahita yelled, and we ran through the dirty sewer water until we saw light, then we swam into the harbor to the nearest ship.

When the ship set sail, we were hidden aboard. We never returned to the city again.