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assassinatesShelby sees death as a gift, and yet refused to kill the dragon during the rescue of the 'princess' in the tower; this implies some level of regret or acknowledgement that killing is inherently wrong and not the gift she perceives as. While that may be related to her dragonspeaking ability, this nature of contradiction is echoed again when she refuses to allow the guild to threaten Garrett with death. What impetus underlies these decisions? Why would she, in essence, discard her values? In what other situations might she repeat this action?
A lot of her reasoning for not killing the dragon comes more out of a respect for the dragon that she doesn't particularly have for human lives. Her god doesn't ask for animal lives, and Shelby happens to like animals a lot more than humans. There is also her sort of pleasure that she gets out of things that are magical (something she relates back to her mother and the feelings of that old life). Her mother had often read her stories and would instill this sense of wonder in Shelby because she didn't really want her daughter to be all that aware of her surroundings at the time, since they were living in a brothel. She wouldn't want to destroy something like a dragon unless she honestly had to (and at the time, she didn't).
The gift comes in the fact that if people are killed by her, or any other assassin dealing, they are serving her god. Her god gets their souls. It's all part of being an assassin, who are essentially priests in this cult-like religion. She doesn't acknowledge that killing is inherently wrong because she doesn't kill Bubbles; she acknowledges that his death serves no real function. He's not harming her, he's not going to be eaten, and he's obviously not a person.
Her refusal to let her guild kill Garrett is not a function of her believing that killing is wrong and not a gift. Garrett is, first and foremost, her employer. If he dies, she does not get her job done. And Shelby is all about completing her jobs. On another level, it's because this is her friend, this is the guy she is in love with. It's not her discarding her values because she's been taught that employers are important until the job is done. She lets her emotions get in the way of the beliefs she's been taught.
If she were to become close to another person, it's possible she would protect them as well, but that hasn't happened yet. Or if Garrett asked and she came to the conclusion that it was possible without harming him.
Additionally, Garrett is repeatedly cited as being 'the first person to ever be kind to her' yet earlier references are made to the noble girl, Chuck, whom she befriended as a child, and Shelby is purported to have had a loving relationship with her mother. Why is it that Garrett's kindness stands out?
As for this, he's the first long-term person that's been kind to her. Chuck had been kind to her, which is something that sort of helped her to cement that while life was hard, there were people who didn't believe it had to be. However, Chuck was also later sacrificed by her parents to appease their gods, so it's like a backhanded lesson to her. Chuck was nice, and then Chuck died. Her mother was nice, and then her mother died. Garrett's been kind, and he hasn't died. He hasn't disappeared on her. His kindness stands out because they've been together on a daily basis for months (excluding when she leaves him), and so she's had more time with him being nice and actually remembering it than with any other person. For example, when he discovers her curiosity over magic, he frequently performs for her, because he knows she likes it. He gives her praise when she doesn't particularly understand why she needs it (praise is saved for a job well done, not because she smiled at him).
Each 'flaw' she has is framed as being superficial and often in the same sentence is heralded as a strength in disguise, ex: she has low self-esteem because she's 'only' a tool, but she's excellent at what she does and loves killing/blood/etc? Why would she consider herself lesser when she has never failed a contract and, as such, have a proven record of her skills being a strength and success?
Being good at what she does doesn't mean that she has to feel good about herself. She's been raised, by her master, to fit into his model of the ideal assassin. He has essentially been warping her mind since he rescued her, to build her up. To make her work harder. She is his tool, and he's told her this often. She serves him, and she serves their god. What she does, it's to make her master feel proud of her, to acquire his approval. Getting approval from the person she is closest to is what drives her. She takes pride in making Rook proud of her, and she takes pride in making Garrett proud of her later. It's a fucked up mentality, but it's the only one she knows now. She remembers what it was like to be with her mother, but that's not the same. That's her old life, and for 16 years, Master Rook was her life. Even after he disappears, she continues to do his work and fulfill his contracts because she doesn't know what else to do with herself for a long time. She had a certain sense of freedom when she becomes a full assassin, but she is always doing this for Rook's approval and to satisfy his wants. She spends a year doing this, and it's even what drives her to settle his debt with the lord that has her rescue Garrett from the tower. So being good at killing people is a fact to her and a matter of pride to her master. She enjoys it because that's what's expected.
Shelby is also told that she's 'no great beauty', but then identified as being 'pretty enough' to be trained as a courtesan. This, however, is a higher class of prostitute than a simple brothel-worker and requires higher standards of beauty. Which standard applies to her? Where or from whom are these opinions on her attractiveness coming from?
I feel like there's been some confusion here. She wasn't trained as a courtesan; she was told she was pretty enough to pass, if she ever needed to masquerade as one in order to get into places. Yes, she's given lessons on having sex but it's not to train her as a courtesan. It's to give her that edge, should she ever need it. I also don't quite understand what you mean about 'no great beauty' and 'pretty enough'. They are not the same, in my opinion. Someone could be pretty without being hailed as 'beautiful'. However, to answer your question, these opinions have come from her master.
Furthermore, Shelby's personality is presented as being introverted (ie: she's a people watcher, she doesn't know how to relate to people, even her own guild members, etc) but there are comments about how she talks about her kills until people are 'ill'. If she's talking to commoners, there's no evidence given as to the why she would randomly launch into discussion of her accomplishments. If she's speaking with fellow guild members, why would her choosing to recount her kills make them 'ill', as presumably they have the same level of desensitization that she does? This also contradicts the fact that she is 'polite', 'quiet' and 'mild-mannered'. People who are polite generally don't talk to others to the point of them being ill about the topic at hand. Under what circumstances would she behave like that?
For the most part, it's Garrett who becomes ill. She's polite in the sense that she is not about to begin yelling at people or demanding things from them. Because she doesn't particularly know how to relate to other people, it's not so much talking about her accomplishments as much as just making conversation. It's not always her own kills that she describes (although she's done that to Garrett plenty of times) but she relates a lot of things to what she's seen growing up in Kinniburgh. She lives with other assassins who like to talk a lot, and so while she doesn't relate to them, it doesn't mean that she doesn't listen to them. They are also the people she has spent the most time with, after her master, who would frequently chat her up about different things (killing, torture, etc.) that most people wouldn't talk about. It's an ignorance on her part when she is talking to other people that she doesn't realize that she's making them sick unless they say something to her. It's not a frequently occurring incident, and she doesn't always talk about the things she's done/seen/heard, but it's not unknown to happen.
If Shelby disagrees with Garrett's assertion that she shouldn't have been raised as an assassin, why then does she choose to alter her principles strictly on the grounds of 'love'? The guild may have threatened Garrett's life if she didn't 'return home', but why would someone who has no self-esteem or belief in their own self-worth be willing to sacrifice the last decade of life, teaching, training and belief ie: the only things that she's ever been 'good at' simply because her guild asked her to come home and in doing so threatened someone she's spent an (unspecified, but presumably shorter than the decade+ she's spent with the guild) amount of time in the company of? Furthermore, since she was technically on guild business (as Garrett had hired her), why would they interfere at all? It's stated that at her age, assassins are allowed to choose their own contracts and make their own decisions, yet no real reference is made, beyond Rook, to some higher power in the guild save the Silent One, and therefore no reasonable basis is established as to why anyone 'higher up' would even care that she was gone unless she was actively disgracing their name or teachings.
Shelby is not technically on guild business. She never technically was, I'm afraid. She was doing her master's business when the lord calls in his debt. She has basically been on the run this whole time without any word about it.
Little self-esteem, not none. But that's exactly why she chooses Garrett over them. She was brought up with the people, but she's always been her master's pawn. Her master is gone now, and in his stead, she has attached herself to Garrett. She doesn't think her upbringing is wrong, but she does believe that Garrett is worth protecting. Without Rook in her life anymore, it's easier for Garrett to take the place of someone to devote herself to. Rook is a memory, like her mother is; Garrett is a real person who can be with her now, and who won't leave her if she protects him properly. The constant exposure to each other 24 hours a day for the past few months hasn't completely erased Rook's importance to her. Because of this, it's resulted in a growing affection, love, and need to impress Garrett. The difference here, between Rook and Garrett, is that Garrett doesn't actually expect her to perform, the way her master did.
Shelby's guild is supposed to be devoted to the Silent One, and Shelby's departure from taking assassination contracts to protecting Garrett is a disgrace to their teachings, essentially. While she can justify it to herself in the sense that she is still killing people on his behalf (and she wants to justify it due to aforementioned reasons of finding herself in a fairytale and at a loss of what to do with Rook's contracts completed), the guild does not take this same stance, which is why Neal comes after her. The ultimatum she is given is because she should be in active duty to the Silent One ie making assassinations, not the more passive duty she has taken it upon herself to fulfill. While she was devoted to Rook, she was serving the guild's purpose, but in being devoted to Garrett, she is at odds with it.
It's said that she's 'no psychopath', yet she views death as a gift and sees her job as a higher calling, while on the same hand being traumatized by the deaths or bereavements in her life and not wanting people to kill. She also hunts down members of her own guild with no more incentive than 'some people are hunting her maybe' and overreacts considerably to what she must know to be standard operating procedures in the assassin's lifestyle. If she were 'loyal' to Garrett, and highly intelligent as the application claims, wouldn't she simply have told Neal that Garrett had hired her (which is permissible by the established rules of the guild) and that the money the guild would receive for this contract is above and beyond their usual fee, thus subverting the need to declare war on the entire guild for what is essentially a misunderstanding?
I'm not quite sure I understand what you're asking or saying in the first sentence. I have not stated, as far as I am aware, that Shelby doesn't want people to kill. She would definitely like for Garrett to not be killed, at first because he is her employer and then later because he is someone she comes to care very deeply for. However, Shelby doesn't see death itself as a gift; I wrote that to have your soul taken by the Silent One is a gift. He is not a god of death, just of assassins and the like. She's been taught that it's her job to her god to perform these acts, but in general she finds that death is just far easier than life, because then you are with the gods. On the topic of her being traumatized over the deaths of people in her life, it's not that they're dead, it's that they have left her. She doesn't attach herself to ideas and beliefs so much as she attaches herself to the people of these beliefs.
I am sorry I didn't make it clear, but Neal specifically told Shelby that basically either come back or he dies. It's a direct threat on not only Garrett, but also on herself as well, especially in her mind. There are people out there because she's told, and that's how she finds them. It's not out of paranoia that she does this. She does overreact, yes, but I don't believe that intelligence and emotions always work together. Assassins aren't meant to serve as protectors, which is what she has been hired for, no matter the money involved. She hasn't been hired to kill someone and swiftly return, as is the norm with her guild. Already she is in violation because of this decision she made on impulse (which happens because she has found herself in the middle of a story like the ones her mother used to tell, and while she is no hero, she has this need to see how it plays out). The money isn't what drives the assassins, it's the kill and the service to the job. Money is nice, but they are more like a cult.
And while it might have been the more intelligent decision to attempt to explain herself, her emotions get in the way of this. By this point, she's loyal to Garrett, no questions asked. Her loyalty, prior to this point, had been to her master, who had been loyal to their god. So because of this shift, she doesn't feel as strong of an attachment to the guild as she once did. Once the threat on Garrett had been made, Shelby began to doubt her desire to return to her guild at the end of her mission, and that is already not permissible.
Physically, it's said that she was starved and tortured to make her a more effective killer/torturer, yet it's not said what sort of tortures she endured. Keeping in mind that a broken bone is never as strong as it was prior to being broken and that scar tissue of sufficient scope inhibits movement and ability, how was she tortured with any effectiveness while still maintaining not only her sanity but also full use of her physical faculties? And how did she become such an efficient killer with what must have been literal months of down-time on the heels of being tortured? Forcing children to work with broken bones sounds good in theory, but in practical application it would result in deformities, long-term pain, permanent physical defects and a far weaker overall physical structure than what Shelby is presented as having. The same can be said for starvation. The idea behind being an assassin (killing a target, being unseen, being good at their job, and in Shelby's abilities it's even stated her strong point is 'being invisible') is herein conflated with the belief that pain makes them more efficient at it, but being a good assassin would mean never being put in a situation where starvation or enduring pain would be necessary. Why, then, did this training occur?
I think there's been some more confusion here as well, because broken bones were never mentioned as a form of torture or punishment used on Shelby. Beatings did occur, but it is possible to hit someone to cause pain without inflicting even bruising, let alone long term damage. The aim here was pain, not debilitation. Likewise, if you cut someone slowly but shallowly, it is possible to cause pain without deep scar tissue that would hamper her skills and abilities. Other forms of torture were psychological, such as sensory deprivation, food deprivation, solitary confinement. This accounts for her coming out of this aspect of her training relatively physically intact, but I would argue that she didn't come out of it with her sanity fully intact. Shelby is very clearly not a person of healthy and sound mind, as described in her personality and in these revisions.
In terms of scars/etc, people who are trained to fight would have defensive wounds to the hands and arms. Anyone who is taught martial arts as a manner of staying alive would protect their torso and head first and foremost. Given Shelby's overall level of competence with fighting and skills, why is the reverse true in her case? If it's a reference to her childhood beatings, one would still expect her to have more defensive wounds than scars to the core of her body, and if it was a result of torture, why would people risk killing their budding assassins into which they put so much training and money by causing potential internal injuries that the technology level of the world isn't equipped to heal?
It's true that she would have been taught to protect herself. She was also a kid, and the others were also kids who were a little bit more vicious than herself. She's competent now because she's been training for most of her life. She hasn't failed a contract, but she also wasn't really great at it. Especially in the beginning when she was unsure of what she was doing. It stands to reason that if she made mistakes, people would fight back. She was a child who was contracted to kill adults because she's been raised to believe that she's serving her god and because someone wanted someone else dead.
As for the torture and the risk of budding assassins, it's all about getting their apprentices to understand what it is they're doing. The strongest are the ones who are going to survive and prove to be the most beneficial, in their opinions. They're a religious order, not a monetary organization, so apprentices who die along the way are seen as not having been strong enough to serve the Silent One, so he can chew on their souls instead.
There seem to be several points in her character – either history or personality – that conflict not only with one another but with the way she chooses to present herself. Why, for instance, would she prostitute herself for a night's stay at an inn – something that implies a level of confidence in her skill and appearance – when she, with her particular subset of abilities, could have stolen the money, won it at a competition (say, knife-throwing or darts) or found some other means to acquire it. Why was it necessary that she resort to prostitution, save to act as a fulcrum for Garrett's development and overall guilt?
To Shelby's mind, prostituting herself exists at the same level of skill as theft etc., and draw far less attention than a trail of missing money across the country would. Her agreeing to have sex with men for money doesn't speak of a confidence in hers appearance so much as an acknowledgment that there are dudes who want sex, and don't mind paying to get it. If she puts it out there, someone'll pick up. To Shelby's mind, some meaningless sex for coin is simple and not a big deal. Showing off her talents in knife throwing or darts again is more attention drawing than a small, fragile-appearing woman offering up her body so the much bigger and stronger man she's traveling with can eat and sleep comfortably.
A lot of her reasoning for not killing the dragon comes more out of a respect for the dragon that she doesn't particularly have for human lives. Her god doesn't ask for animal lives, and Shelby happens to like animals a lot more than humans. There is also her sort of pleasure that she gets out of things that are magical (something she relates back to her mother and the feelings of that old life). Her mother had often read her stories and would instill this sense of wonder in Shelby because she didn't really want her daughter to be all that aware of her surroundings at the time, since they were living in a brothel. She wouldn't want to destroy something like a dragon unless she honestly had to (and at the time, she didn't).
The gift comes in the fact that if people are killed by her, or any other assassin dealing, they are serving her god. Her god gets their souls. It's all part of being an assassin, who are essentially priests in this cult-like religion. She doesn't acknowledge that killing is inherently wrong because she doesn't kill Bubbles; she acknowledges that his death serves no real function. He's not harming her, he's not going to be eaten, and he's obviously not a person.
Her refusal to let her guild kill Garrett is not a function of her believing that killing is wrong and not a gift. Garrett is, first and foremost, her employer. If he dies, she does not get her job done. And Shelby is all about completing her jobs. On another level, it's because this is her friend, this is the guy she is in love with. It's not her discarding her values because she's been taught that employers are important until the job is done. She lets her emotions get in the way of the beliefs she's been taught.
If she were to become close to another person, it's possible she would protect them as well, but that hasn't happened yet. Or if Garrett asked and she came to the conclusion that it was possible without harming him.
Additionally, Garrett is repeatedly cited as being 'the first person to ever be kind to her' yet earlier references are made to the noble girl, Chuck, whom she befriended as a child, and Shelby is purported to have had a loving relationship with her mother. Why is it that Garrett's kindness stands out?
As for this, he's the first long-term person that's been kind to her. Chuck had been kind to her, which is something that sort of helped her to cement that while life was hard, there were people who didn't believe it had to be. However, Chuck was also later sacrificed by her parents to appease their gods, so it's like a backhanded lesson to her. Chuck was nice, and then Chuck died. Her mother was nice, and then her mother died. Garrett's been kind, and he hasn't died. He hasn't disappeared on her. His kindness stands out because they've been together on a daily basis for months (excluding when she leaves him), and so she's had more time with him being nice and actually remembering it than with any other person. For example, when he discovers her curiosity over magic, he frequently performs for her, because he knows she likes it. He gives her praise when she doesn't particularly understand why she needs it (praise is saved for a job well done, not because she smiled at him).
Each 'flaw' she has is framed as being superficial and often in the same sentence is heralded as a strength in disguise, ex: she has low self-esteem because she's 'only' a tool, but she's excellent at what she does and loves killing/blood/etc? Why would she consider herself lesser when she has never failed a contract and, as such, have a proven record of her skills being a strength and success?
Being good at what she does doesn't mean that she has to feel good about herself. She's been raised, by her master, to fit into his model of the ideal assassin. He has essentially been warping her mind since he rescued her, to build her up. To make her work harder. She is his tool, and he's told her this often. She serves him, and she serves their god. What she does, it's to make her master feel proud of her, to acquire his approval. Getting approval from the person she is closest to is what drives her. She takes pride in making Rook proud of her, and she takes pride in making Garrett proud of her later. It's a fucked up mentality, but it's the only one she knows now. She remembers what it was like to be with her mother, but that's not the same. That's her old life, and for 16 years, Master Rook was her life. Even after he disappears, she continues to do his work and fulfill his contracts because she doesn't know what else to do with herself for a long time. She had a certain sense of freedom when she becomes a full assassin, but she is always doing this for Rook's approval and to satisfy his wants. She spends a year doing this, and it's even what drives her to settle his debt with the lord that has her rescue Garrett from the tower. So being good at killing people is a fact to her and a matter of pride to her master. She enjoys it because that's what's expected.
Shelby is also told that she's 'no great beauty', but then identified as being 'pretty enough' to be trained as a courtesan. This, however, is a higher class of prostitute than a simple brothel-worker and requires higher standards of beauty. Which standard applies to her? Where or from whom are these opinions on her attractiveness coming from?
I feel like there's been some confusion here. She wasn't trained as a courtesan; she was told she was pretty enough to pass, if she ever needed to masquerade as one in order to get into places. Yes, she's given lessons on having sex but it's not to train her as a courtesan. It's to give her that edge, should she ever need it. I also don't quite understand what you mean about 'no great beauty' and 'pretty enough'. They are not the same, in my opinion. Someone could be pretty without being hailed as 'beautiful'. However, to answer your question, these opinions have come from her master.
Furthermore, Shelby's personality is presented as being introverted (ie: she's a people watcher, she doesn't know how to relate to people, even her own guild members, etc) but there are comments about how she talks about her kills until people are 'ill'. If she's talking to commoners, there's no evidence given as to the why she would randomly launch into discussion of her accomplishments. If she's speaking with fellow guild members, why would her choosing to recount her kills make them 'ill', as presumably they have the same level of desensitization that she does? This also contradicts the fact that she is 'polite', 'quiet' and 'mild-mannered'. People who are polite generally don't talk to others to the point of them being ill about the topic at hand. Under what circumstances would she behave like that?
For the most part, it's Garrett who becomes ill. She's polite in the sense that she is not about to begin yelling at people or demanding things from them. Because she doesn't particularly know how to relate to other people, it's not so much talking about her accomplishments as much as just making conversation. It's not always her own kills that she describes (although she's done that to Garrett plenty of times) but she relates a lot of things to what she's seen growing up in Kinniburgh. She lives with other assassins who like to talk a lot, and so while she doesn't relate to them, it doesn't mean that she doesn't listen to them. They are also the people she has spent the most time with, after her master, who would frequently chat her up about different things (killing, torture, etc.) that most people wouldn't talk about. It's an ignorance on her part when she is talking to other people that she doesn't realize that she's making them sick unless they say something to her. It's not a frequently occurring incident, and she doesn't always talk about the things she's done/seen/heard, but it's not unknown to happen.
If Shelby disagrees with Garrett's assertion that she shouldn't have been raised as an assassin, why then does she choose to alter her principles strictly on the grounds of 'love'? The guild may have threatened Garrett's life if she didn't 'return home', but why would someone who has no self-esteem or belief in their own self-worth be willing to sacrifice the last decade of life, teaching, training and belief ie: the only things that she's ever been 'good at' simply because her guild asked her to come home and in doing so threatened someone she's spent an (unspecified, but presumably shorter than the decade+ she's spent with the guild) amount of time in the company of? Furthermore, since she was technically on guild business (as Garrett had hired her), why would they interfere at all? It's stated that at her age, assassins are allowed to choose their own contracts and make their own decisions, yet no real reference is made, beyond Rook, to some higher power in the guild save the Silent One, and therefore no reasonable basis is established as to why anyone 'higher up' would even care that she was gone unless she was actively disgracing their name or teachings.
Shelby is not technically on guild business. She never technically was, I'm afraid. She was doing her master's business when the lord calls in his debt. She has basically been on the run this whole time without any word about it.
Little self-esteem, not none. But that's exactly why she chooses Garrett over them. She was brought up with the people, but she's always been her master's pawn. Her master is gone now, and in his stead, she has attached herself to Garrett. She doesn't think her upbringing is wrong, but she does believe that Garrett is worth protecting. Without Rook in her life anymore, it's easier for Garrett to take the place of someone to devote herself to. Rook is a memory, like her mother is; Garrett is a real person who can be with her now, and who won't leave her if she protects him properly. The constant exposure to each other 24 hours a day for the past few months hasn't completely erased Rook's importance to her. Because of this, it's resulted in a growing affection, love, and need to impress Garrett. The difference here, between Rook and Garrett, is that Garrett doesn't actually expect her to perform, the way her master did.
Shelby's guild is supposed to be devoted to the Silent One, and Shelby's departure from taking assassination contracts to protecting Garrett is a disgrace to their teachings, essentially. While she can justify it to herself in the sense that she is still killing people on his behalf (and she wants to justify it due to aforementioned reasons of finding herself in a fairytale and at a loss of what to do with Rook's contracts completed), the guild does not take this same stance, which is why Neal comes after her. The ultimatum she is given is because she should be in active duty to the Silent One ie making assassinations, not the more passive duty she has taken it upon herself to fulfill. While she was devoted to Rook, she was serving the guild's purpose, but in being devoted to Garrett, she is at odds with it.
It's said that she's 'no psychopath', yet she views death as a gift and sees her job as a higher calling, while on the same hand being traumatized by the deaths or bereavements in her life and not wanting people to kill. She also hunts down members of her own guild with no more incentive than 'some people are hunting her maybe' and overreacts considerably to what she must know to be standard operating procedures in the assassin's lifestyle. If she were 'loyal' to Garrett, and highly intelligent as the application claims, wouldn't she simply have told Neal that Garrett had hired her (which is permissible by the established rules of the guild) and that the money the guild would receive for this contract is above and beyond their usual fee, thus subverting the need to declare war on the entire guild for what is essentially a misunderstanding?
I'm not quite sure I understand what you're asking or saying in the first sentence. I have not stated, as far as I am aware, that Shelby doesn't want people to kill. She would definitely like for Garrett to not be killed, at first because he is her employer and then later because he is someone she comes to care very deeply for. However, Shelby doesn't see death itself as a gift; I wrote that to have your soul taken by the Silent One is a gift. He is not a god of death, just of assassins and the like. She's been taught that it's her job to her god to perform these acts, but in general she finds that death is just far easier than life, because then you are with the gods. On the topic of her being traumatized over the deaths of people in her life, it's not that they're dead, it's that they have left her. She doesn't attach herself to ideas and beliefs so much as she attaches herself to the people of these beliefs.
I am sorry I didn't make it clear, but Neal specifically told Shelby that basically either come back or he dies. It's a direct threat on not only Garrett, but also on herself as well, especially in her mind. There are people out there because she's told, and that's how she finds them. It's not out of paranoia that she does this. She does overreact, yes, but I don't believe that intelligence and emotions always work together. Assassins aren't meant to serve as protectors, which is what she has been hired for, no matter the money involved. She hasn't been hired to kill someone and swiftly return, as is the norm with her guild. Already she is in violation because of this decision she made on impulse (which happens because she has found herself in the middle of a story like the ones her mother used to tell, and while she is no hero, she has this need to see how it plays out). The money isn't what drives the assassins, it's the kill and the service to the job. Money is nice, but they are more like a cult.
And while it might have been the more intelligent decision to attempt to explain herself, her emotions get in the way of this. By this point, she's loyal to Garrett, no questions asked. Her loyalty, prior to this point, had been to her master, who had been loyal to their god. So because of this shift, she doesn't feel as strong of an attachment to the guild as she once did. Once the threat on Garrett had been made, Shelby began to doubt her desire to return to her guild at the end of her mission, and that is already not permissible.
Physically, it's said that she was starved and tortured to make her a more effective killer/torturer, yet it's not said what sort of tortures she endured. Keeping in mind that a broken bone is never as strong as it was prior to being broken and that scar tissue of sufficient scope inhibits movement and ability, how was she tortured with any effectiveness while still maintaining not only her sanity but also full use of her physical faculties? And how did she become such an efficient killer with what must have been literal months of down-time on the heels of being tortured? Forcing children to work with broken bones sounds good in theory, but in practical application it would result in deformities, long-term pain, permanent physical defects and a far weaker overall physical structure than what Shelby is presented as having. The same can be said for starvation. The idea behind being an assassin (killing a target, being unseen, being good at their job, and in Shelby's abilities it's even stated her strong point is 'being invisible') is herein conflated with the belief that pain makes them more efficient at it, but being a good assassin would mean never being put in a situation where starvation or enduring pain would be necessary. Why, then, did this training occur?
I think there's been some more confusion here as well, because broken bones were never mentioned as a form of torture or punishment used on Shelby. Beatings did occur, but it is possible to hit someone to cause pain without inflicting even bruising, let alone long term damage. The aim here was pain, not debilitation. Likewise, if you cut someone slowly but shallowly, it is possible to cause pain without deep scar tissue that would hamper her skills and abilities. Other forms of torture were psychological, such as sensory deprivation, food deprivation, solitary confinement. This accounts for her coming out of this aspect of her training relatively physically intact, but I would argue that she didn't come out of it with her sanity fully intact. Shelby is very clearly not a person of healthy and sound mind, as described in her personality and in these revisions.
In terms of scars/etc, people who are trained to fight would have defensive wounds to the hands and arms. Anyone who is taught martial arts as a manner of staying alive would protect their torso and head first and foremost. Given Shelby's overall level of competence with fighting and skills, why is the reverse true in her case? If it's a reference to her childhood beatings, one would still expect her to have more defensive wounds than scars to the core of her body, and if it was a result of torture, why would people risk killing their budding assassins into which they put so much training and money by causing potential internal injuries that the technology level of the world isn't equipped to heal?
It's true that she would have been taught to protect herself. She was also a kid, and the others were also kids who were a little bit more vicious than herself. She's competent now because she's been training for most of her life. She hasn't failed a contract, but she also wasn't really great at it. Especially in the beginning when she was unsure of what she was doing. It stands to reason that if she made mistakes, people would fight back. She was a child who was contracted to kill adults because she's been raised to believe that she's serving her god and because someone wanted someone else dead.
As for the torture and the risk of budding assassins, it's all about getting their apprentices to understand what it is they're doing. The strongest are the ones who are going to survive and prove to be the most beneficial, in their opinions. They're a religious order, not a monetary organization, so apprentices who die along the way are seen as not having been strong enough to serve the Silent One, so he can chew on their souls instead.
There seem to be several points in her character – either history or personality – that conflict not only with one another but with the way she chooses to present herself. Why, for instance, would she prostitute herself for a night's stay at an inn – something that implies a level of confidence in her skill and appearance – when she, with her particular subset of abilities, could have stolen the money, won it at a competition (say, knife-throwing or darts) or found some other means to acquire it. Why was it necessary that she resort to prostitution, save to act as a fulcrum for Garrett's development and overall guilt?
To Shelby's mind, prostituting herself exists at the same level of skill as theft etc., and draw far less attention than a trail of missing money across the country would. Her agreeing to have sex with men for money doesn't speak of a confidence in hers appearance so much as an acknowledgment that there are dudes who want sex, and don't mind paying to get it. If she puts it out there, someone'll pick up. To Shelby's mind, some meaningless sex for coin is simple and not a big deal. Showing off her talents in knife throwing or darts again is more attention drawing than a small, fragile-appearing woman offering up her body so the much bigger and stronger man she's traveling with can eat and sleep comfortably.
