I think this was published in one of the Asimov SF magazines in the 1980’s. The story is told from the perspective of a lead character, as you follow them though a mild adventure. I think they’re a lone traveler arriving at an inn and needing a room. There’s some conflict, it’s resolved, and the character ends up in the room, alone, at the end of the story and it is subtly revealed that the character is female. Not once did the author use a gendered pronoun and it’s clear that most readers would assume the character was male. I thought it was a clever story idea, playing on the reader’s expectations and using them as part of the narrative.
Pulling out my Thieves’ World/Sanctuary books later today; I have a hunch it was in one of them. Plus I haven’t read them in a while and this will be a good excuse.
Ooh, that sounds familiar. I know I had a few of those books back in the day. If it helps, I think the person in question was a mage/wizard of some sort.
This is a possibility as well. I might be able to track this down online. It would have been the character introduction, so if that happened in a short story this could be it.
