The Obvious?

After a day perusing Robert G. Hoyland's Arabia and the Arabs, I've started reading Golden Fool, Book Two in Robin Hobb's Tawny Man trilogy. The first volume of a Hobb trilogy is always set-up, so I'm not going to judge it yet except to say something near the end of the first book (Fool's Errand) is pretty depressing, though both expected and well-executed. Anyway, as I was saying, the author is setting up a mystery about who Chade's new apprentice assassin is. Only he never uses a pronoun to refer to her. Which makes me strongly suspect it's one of the two possible female characters. I mean, in quiz bowl at least, ducking the gender pronoun means female.

We'll see, I guess.

UPDATE: Or you could introduce a third possibility, one stronger than the other two. Still, I'm only considering women at this point.