Nicoya's plot to assassinate Ashla and her unborn child

Nicoya's plot to assassinate Ashla and her unborn child extends an attempted coup into a planned attack on Trace's family. The threat is not an immediate strike: hired assassins are scheduled to begin hunting Ashla and the child after the birth. That delay gives the conspiracy a grim precision, while leaving Guin to confront a danger that, by his understanding of the assassin trade, will persist until its intended victims are dead.

Origins and Targets

Weeks before Guin considers how to respond, Nicoya, a handmaiden at Sanctuary, nearly succeeds in organizing a coup against the religious house and education center run by Magnus. She kills some priests, turns others to her cause, and makes students victims of the upheaval. During this same campaign, Sagan disappears, and Nicoya hires assassins to target Trace's wife and baby. The attack on Ashla is therefore part of a wider effort to damage the people around the twins, not an isolated threat.

Nicoya's family connection deepens the danger. She is the daughter of Acadian, a K'ypruti known for torturing prisoners during the wars. Acadian had captured Trace during the invasion of the twins' household in the civil war, healed his injuries so that he would be fit to endure torture, and kept him imprisoned for much of a year. His scars remain. Nicoya's connection to that history makes the new threat feel like a continuation of violence already visited on Trace, now directed at his mate and child.

The Assassination Threat

The intended victims are Trace's beloved mate, Ashla, and their unborn child. The hired clan is scheduled to begin its hunt two months after the child's birth; at the point when Guin considers the danger, the birth is about a year away. The gap between the plan and its execution does not make it safely remote. Guin believes that the clan will not stop until it completes the job, so the threat is defined by its persistence as much as by its target.

The danger also reflects a changed political landscape. Trace has established a law making it a high crime for one Shadowdweller to kill another without provable and imperative cause. The former assassin clans have been dissolved, but those who have not reformed continue their work through secret, illegal guilds. Some have scruples and others do not; Guin doubts Nicoya would have hired an ineffectual group, and expects the contract to involve the most treacherous operators. Some are in the city, while others are beyond it, making the search potentially require travel.

Guin's Response and the Stakes of Pursuit

Guin's value in pursuing the plot comes from his past: he ran with his old clan, and although fifty years have passed, he still considers himself an insider. He needs to work his way back into the city's darkest circles to identify or reach the people behind the contract. That return is difficult not only because of the passage of time, but because the clans remember him as someone who abandoned his people to place himself at a queen's side. His history gives him access and makes that access contentious.

Travel presents another obstacle. Aboveground journeys can be dangerous for Shadowdwellers, so Guin considers Shadowscape, a parallel dimension where moonlight is the only light and is safe for them. But the refuge has a strict limit: after a maximum of two days, its otherwise ideal conditions can produce euphoria that sufferers may not recognize, keeping them there until their minds are destroyed. The pursuit of the assassins thus carries its own risks. Nicoya's plot places Ashla and her child under a future death sentence; stopping it requires Guin to enter the clandestine world of the guilds while navigating both his damaged standing there and the hazards of the route.