Been giving it some thought. I'll give a summary now, while I pluck away at flavor and specifics.
Ankabut was the daughter of a Sea Mage who joined the crew of a female captain who eventually married him. They were traders, though did a bit of smuggling on the side to make ends meet. Because they wanted to stay independent they never sought to gain the backing of a guild or similar, so it was a precarious line of work. Even so, they found enough success to buy a small estate and start thinking about settling down a bit. So they sold the ship and had a daughter and managed their business...but when Ankabut was starting to get older, they started to think about taking to the seas again, with their daughter with them.
Maybe it was bad luck. Ankabut herself doesn't remember the specifics of what happened very clearly. She was still young, just a little girl. The ship they'd bought...a small thing that just a handful of people could easily run...had set sail when another ship began overtaking them. She remembers the blasts of fire blossoming overhead to destroy their sails. Then her father hurried her down below deck and pressed an object into her hand.
This was his lucky charm, he said to her. He taught her the word to speak as she clenched it, and told her to stay below...and whatever happened, not to leave the ship. He reassured her, reminding her that he was a Sea Mage, and not to be taken lightly. Then with a kiss for her forehead, he ran back upstairs.
Ankabut did as her father had told her. The 'lucky charm' evaporated in her hands, and the world went grey and cold around her. She didn't know then that she had entered the Ethereal Plane. It was a magic device her father had kept around for those moments when he needed a way out and nothing else was handy. On hearing, distantly, sounds from above, she found she could 'float' up through the deck...and there she saw the massacre of her parents and the few friends they'd brought on as crew being assaulted by the crew of a much larger vessel. Oh, they took a toll...they were experienced at repelling pirates and the like...but there were too many, and there was at least one mage on the other ship to counter her father's magic.
She could do nothing, though she tried. The world was little more than smoke to her.
An hour later, the magic of the 'lucky charm' expired. By that time the ship that had attacked was long gone. They hadn't set fire to her father's ship for some reason...perhaps intending it to be discovered. Fortunately for her, it was. The trading vessel that stopped to investigate the drifting hulk found her and took her back to shore. Perhaps he would have done more, but Ankabut fled into the city.
It was two years later when she was taken off the street by one of Hakiyah's. She's tried to make a clean break. Her first assassination 'target' was herself. Her old self. The self that had been helpless. The self who had, unknowing, taken the very thing that could have saved her father or mother. In the service of Hakiyah, she found someone new in herself. Someone better.
I think given Salahuddin's close alliance with the djinn, he would know #1 and 2.
