his remaining advantage, relaxed his hands and let them fall, wondering wildly
all the while whether his only chance might be in some wild try at escape. The
woman in the edge of his vision stepped back, brushed at her robes, adjusted her
hood. The knife rode razor-edged at his throat and the hand which held his chin
gave him nothing.
Mradhon Vis kept his grip and held the ruffian just off his balance, looked in a
moment’s distraction at the lady in question … at a severe and dusky face in
the faint light of the alleyway. She was beautiful. His romantical soul was
touched – that seldom-afforded self which launched itself mostly in the wake of
more profitable motives. ‘Be off,’ he told Sjekso, and flung the villain a
good several body lengths down the alley; and Sjekso scrambled up and set
to his heels without stopping to see anything.
‘Wait!’ the woman called after Sjekso. The would-be rapist spun about with his
back to a wall, ducking an imagined blow from behind. Mradhon Vis, dagger still
in hand, stood facing him, utterly confounded.
‘The boy and I are old friends,’ she said – and to Sjekso: ‘Isn’t it so?’
Sjekso straightened with his back against the wall and managed a bow, if a
wobbling one … managed a sneer, his braggadocio recovered in the face of a man
he, after all, knew from the dice table that night – and Mradhon Vis took a
tighter and furious grip on his dagger, knowing this vermin at least from the
tables at the Unicorn.
But feminine fingers touched very lightly on his bare arm. ‘A misunderstanding,’