"You will become named once you become an assassin."

I choose to believe those words with all my heart. There may be another way—a better way—but I cannot find it. To become a citizen, I must be named. In order to become named, one must have a profession. Of course, when I was younger, I dreamed of receiving an honored name: of becoming an apothecary, a shipbuilder, or a trader. I wanted to create wondrous potions and beautiful crafts, and then sail to distant ports to meet new and kind companions. I wanted to bring even greater honor to one of those great names.

But now, as I stand ready to perform my first assassination, I know these honored names are impossible. Today I must earn a dishonored name.

I am currently waiting in the fish market by the sea. It's almost noon and the market is crowded, while everyone rushes about to buy before the best fishes are sold or rotten. The sun overhead removes any shadows—except for those beneath the wooden carts—and causes a putrid smell to rise amid the sea breeze. I picked this location because of the crowds. With so many people we can move without being seen, and with so many stands we can become lost in an instant. Or at least, that's how I was able to convince the others. We each know this market well.

There are three of us who are working together to become named. A boy with black hair, a girl with a scar, and myself. I’m the oldest, in my fourteenth year. Hermes told us that the priest would pass through this market at midday, wearing a brown cassock gartered with golden thread, and that we would know him by his limp. We are early, but so far I have only seen slaves shopping for their masters, or men and women rushing through the humid market and into fresh sea air.

I look up to check on the girl with the scar. During this assassination, she is serving as a lookout. I can see her standing on the crumbling roof above the market entrance, vigilantly peering out over the street below. Good. When I shift my stance to get a better view, I feel my stolen knife pressed against my chest, where I had fastened earlier it using some loose fabric. Good. Now I’m checking everything. The crate is right next to me, filled with old hay. I have plenty of mud and charcoal on my face and tunic. The boy with the black hair is loitering by the market gate, pacing back and forth, looking at every passerby.

It would be a lie to say that I’m not nervous. My left leg is shaking. But it would also be a lie to say that I’m scared. This is my chance to seize my future, and I will take it. I have no regret for the priest—I know how evil priests can be—and I have no regret for myself. This is my path.

When I look up, the girl with the scar has raised her right hand.

"I pray to no one, because no one has answered me before. But, if there is anyone there, I pray that I might earn my name. And my companions theirs."

As I muttered those words under my breath, our first ever assassination started.

It might seem simple at first. People die easily, and, as a matter of course, are easy to kill. You can poison someone, push them off a ledge, shoot them with a crossbow, get them drunk enough, etc. I’m sure there are other ways that are better and more imaginative. But, in short, any idiot can commit murder. The real challenge is getting away with it.

Or so you’d think.

Actually, the real challenge for us is that we only have one opportunity. The contract Hermes had us sign was fairly specific: the priest has to be killed today, during his walk from the cathedral to the house of a named citizen. We only met Hermes and learned about this assassination last night, so we didn’t have a chance to come up with some elaborate scheme. Plus, we don’t have any money. The small knives that the boy with the black hair and I are hiding were stolen from the orphanage's kitchen, and the girl with the scar has nothing at all.

Hence, I came up with a straightforward plan. Probably not the best plan, but at least it was a plan I could drive into the heads of the boy with black hair and the girl with a scar. And if we all stick to the plan, I’m confident that two fourteen year olds and a thirteen year old will be able to assassinate a middle-aged priest. Very confident. Fairly confident.

When the girl with the scar raised her hand, the boy with the black hair started to move. It was our agreed upon signal that the priest had entered the market—I assumed that he would walk slowly, because of his limp—and so the boy with the black hair started to circle behind him. At least, that’s what I thought the boy with the black hair was doing. I couldn’t see the priest yet, but I knew he must be in the crowd, limping in a cassock with golden threads. I picked up the crate filled with hay which I had prepared and started walking towards the entrance. The smell of sun-dried fish was everywhere.

"Get 'em while they're fresh! Five kopecks only!"

"Citizens, try my fish today! I caught them this very morning, all healthy mackerel!"

"Buy your fish here!"

While walking through these vendors, I saw our target. He is bald, or at least balding on the crown of his head, and from fifteen paces I could see the pock marks along the side of his face. No priest that I know is strong (and this one doesn’t seem particularly strong either) but he is tall. Which makes him easy to follow. I take a few more steps parallel to the priest, shadowing him as he moves into the more crowded areas of the market. It's not my turn to intercept him.

The boy with the black hair. A flash of light.

For a moment I could see, reflected in the noon sunlight, a knife in the hands of the boy with the black hair. He was directly behind the priest—judging by the man’s head—and had his knife in a reversed grip, near my eye level. Stabbing. He was stabbing. I couldn’t see where the knife entered the priest, since another group of citizens or perhaps slaves crossed between us. But I could tell that the boy with the black hair has completed his part of the plan. The priest’s pock-marked face suddenly convulsed, contorting in shock and sudden pain. He would cry out soon.

I know I just said that people are easy to kill. And I really do believe that. But we only have this one chance to become named, and I can’t blindly trust my own beliefs. I don't know whether the boy with the black hair’s attack will prove to be lethal, or if his unlucky knife got caught in the priest’s vertebrae. The thrust might not have been strong enough. Or perhaps the priest will recover, as every doctor would try to save a priest, knowing how many kopecks and favors the church can bestow.

Now I must act to finish this.

"Aaaahhh… ahhhh…."

The priest is starting to realize the pain. I'm running with the crate before me, weaving back and forth among the adults, covering those last ten paces that separate me from my target. I have to reach him before he screams. That sound will draw too much attention.

"Hey, watch where you’re going!"

"Move out of the way, kid."

I want to claim that everything is going in slow motion. To imagine I danced through the crowd, pirouetted around the nearby fish stand, and gracefully knocked down the balding priest. But that's not how it's happening. One second I was running helter-skelter, and now I'm resting on the ground. Well, not quite. It's more accurate to say that I’m lying on top of the priest, and he's lying on the road, covered in moldy hay and broken wooden staves from my crate. Which is even better than I had expected.

The crate is actually the best part of my plan. I grabbed it when I left the orphanage this morning, along with some of the hay upon which my friends and I sometimes sleep. The crate itself was rotten, having been used for carrying mussels and crabs found by the sea back to the orphanage, and seemed ready to break under a solid impact. Originally, I thought that the crate would give me an excuse for knocking over the priest, and a distraction for the crowd to explain away his yells. But then I realized hay would become my disguise; by covering the priest's upper body in hay, no one would notice the blood pooling beneath him.

Or the knife I had shoved into his chest.

As soon as I knocked the priest down he shouted, but successive impacts with the crate and then the hewn stone road left him almost breathless. While lying on top of the priest I slid my right hand into my tunic, beneath the neckline, and quickly pulled my knife from its carefully wrapped inner pocket. I stabbed the knife into his body for leverage as I stood up. I didn't look at his eyes: only at the knife, his brown cassock, and now them twined together. We both got lucky. The knife was now embedded between the priest's right ribs, a clean and mortal blow.

"I apologize for knocking you down Father," I called out.

And then I started sprinting. Fast and low, keeping my face down and my body close to the legs of the slaves and citizens rushing through the foul-smelling, humid, and crowded fish market.

Right now I was a murderer. If I got away, only then I would become an assassin. Only then would I become a named.