A few streets over from the hubbub, a young girl walked. The guards would see nothing out of the ordinary about her, other than the lack of a chaperone. They'd just see a little girl who happened to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that's exactly what she wanted them to think.
She'd been hoping to gradually take a path where she could meet up with the others who were on their way to the guild, but her plan was momentarily thwarted as a guard stepped out in front of her. "Ho, there! Where d'ya think yer goin'? Can't ya hear there's a fight on?!" Indeed, now that she thought about it, she could hear the city's alarm bells summoning the rest of the army. [i]The idiots! Why are they drawing so much attention to themselves? Celaena of all people should be above just killing to make an impression.[/i]
She didn't reveal any of her thoughts, and put on her scared, innocent face and her city urchin accent. "Pardon me, sir, but I'ma goin' to market, only, my lady, she telled me to go alone today, a'cause she couldn't spare no stable boys to go with me and help me figure out what roads are what. I don' read signs so good, an' I think I made a wrong turn somewheres." Even as she said it she was fumbling with the small purse she wore on her belt, like she was going to try to bribe the man.
[i]A fine lady always has her embroidery with her.[/i] A message that had been drilled into her head so many times when she was younger. Well, she'd found a way to make it work. As the man leaned closer to her to see what he would get as a bribe, she took one of her embroidery needles from the purse and sank it into the vein in his wrist. He let out a yell for a fraction of a second, before the paralytic drug took control of him and he fell to the ground, either dead or permanently paralyzed.
Aery plucked the needle from the guard's wrist, dried it on her handkerchief, and tucked it back into her embroidery kit, and continued on her way. She much preferred poison to throat-cutting, as it was less messy, though she carried several knives for when she ran out of sewing needles.