The Saintess and the Villainess

Chapter 62

The Unseen Rain had followed silently behind the carriage the whole way from the capital, waiting for their chance to strike.

Nothing about this assignment seemed as though it was going to be particularly challenging. You would think that a figure as important as the Saintess would travel with more guards, but she traveled with almost none.

Only the elf prince even carried a weapon, although Rain could tell that the biggest potential threat was actually the red-headed cleric. They could sense that she possessed a staggering amount of true magic.

And yet, even that small amount of protection hadn't stayed around for long. When the group reached Longren, the elf prince had left to go somewhere else, and when they reached the church the red-headed cleric had simply said goodnight and left the Saintess alone.

Unguarded. Vulnerable.

And still Rain stayed hidden. They hadn't become the best assassin in the Empire by being overly hasty.

Finally, the Saintess had fallen asleep.

Rain dropped down from the ceiling and approached silently, dagger in hand.

Several things had been bothering Rain about the Saintess ever since they had begun to follow her, and up close it was becoming more and more confusing.

The Saintess was wrong in all sorts of ways. She didn't... fit correctly. She was an elf, but she was an important citizen of the Wyernwolf Empire. She was supposed to be a cleric, but she didn't dress or act like a cleric. She was supposed to be a woman, and yet she...

Really, Rain knew they should just finish the job and head back to the capital as quickly as possible. But they couldn't help pausing, staring in fascination at the strange figure before them.

And there was one more thing that seemed to be in the wrong place...

Suddenly, the Saintess awoke with a start.

The Saintess and the assassin made eye contact, holding it for what felt like an eternity.

Finally, Rain's curiosity won out.

"What are you?" they asked.

"I—what—?" asked Anne, blinking. "What am I? What do you mean?"

"Are you a man or a woman?" they demanded.

"Oh," said the Saintess.

"They say you're the Saintess, but you have short hair and wear men's clothes," they said.

"Yeah, but I'm still a woman," said Anne.

"Why?"

"Why?" Anne was taken aback. "Just because I am. My gender doesn't have anything to do with the way I dress. I just... how do I explain it?"

This was a vaguely medieval fantasy world. Anne wasn't entirely sure if they had an established philosophy of gender identity here. Like, certainly trans people existed here, but they probably didn't have a modern identity politics framework to understand gender through. Maybe there was some sort of culturally specific understanding of genders outside the norm in some culture or other in this world, but if there was, Anne didn't know about it...

Fuck it, Anne wasn't creative enough or awake enough to come up with a particularly careful or thorough explanation.

"I'm not a woman because of the way I look or how I dress, I'm just a woman because I know I'm a woman," said Anne. "What about you, don't you have some intuitive sense of what your gender is?"