Marona Shrike returned from her first job with the severed right hand of a billionaire. Unceremoniously she threw it on the bounty table of the assassin’s guild. Flakes of dried blood cracked off the wrist and fell on the weathered wood.
Asteros leaned forward in his seat to inspect the thing. His gloved hands gingerly ran over the light skin. He took out an electric pad and pressed the hand’s thumb and fingers into it, one-by-one. Marona tapped her foot through the whole thing.
“It’s him,” she insisted.
Asteros’s monitor dinged its assent. It was, certifiably, him.
“My reward,” she demanded. Asteros rolled his eyes; it was always the new ones.
“It is him,” he said in his nasally voice. “However.”
He pushed his glasses further up his nose. This was what they paid him for.
“We can’t pay you the full amount. He’s missing something.”
Marona furrowed her brow. “The hell do you mean?”
Asteros swiveled the monitor around for Marona’s convenience to reveal the bounty details. Marona watched as Asteros cycled through several photographs in a carousel: the stern face of an unremarkable-looking man named Anthony Boone, Boone in a boardroom surrounded by more men in white suits, a close-up of Boone’s right hand.
“Can you spot the difference?” Asteros asked snidely about this last photo.
The photo looked exactly like the real thing sitting on the table – except for its lack of blood, and the gold ring with no less than eight tiny inset diamonds. Marona’s jaw dropped.
“I- That is- Well-” she stammered. Asteros smirked. Truly, though the Guild would not have minded the boon, they did not need the ring. But Asteros’s job as bounty overseer was to nickel and dime who he could, to avoid paying the bulk of the attractive bounties the Guild had set. And it was always so easy to trip up the newbies.
“We can’t pay you for the job without the ring,” he said. “It’s all there in the bounty.” Now was the time when she would break down, possibly cry, sputter that he was not wearing the ring when she killed him; it was lost forever; please could you make an exception (no, he could not; sorry, those were the rules).
Instead, Marona growled and pulled the screen closer to her. She scrolled down the page until she got to the text of the bounty. She zoomed in and gave it a read, out loud so Asteros could follow along.
“Bring the severed left hand of Anthony Boone, CEO of CorpuServ. No need to clean. At time of submission, all personal effects on the target’s hand are to be surrendered to The Guild.”
Marona looked pointedly at Asteros, who apparently had not followed.
“All personal effects on the target’s hand,” he repeated. “And yet, you have brought no personal effects.”
It was Marona’s turn to smirk. “‘At time of submission,’” she said. “Which is right now. And right now, he has nothing on his hand. If you wanted the ring, you should have put it in the bounty text. Or did you forget Guild Manual Title 2 §13.2: ‘Guild members are bound only by the text of the bounty brief. Media such as photos, video, and virtual reconstructions are supplemental job aids only.’”
Asteros’s jaw moved up and down, but the only sound that came out was a strangled sort of wheeze. He looked from the brief on the screen to Marona, then back to the brief again.
“My reward,” said Marona, holding up her account card.
—
Twenty minutes later, Marona strolled out of the guild office, two million credits richer. She jammed her hand in the pocket of her long brown overcoat and felt around until her fingers brushed against something small and smooth – a gold ring with no less than eight inset diamonds.
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