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something made unintelligible by humiliation, anger, pain, and—well, grumbling—he pressed the makeshift bandage to the wound in a motion that apparently struck the tiny northern god with no small measure of amusement.
    “No!” she insisted in response to Olgun's newest image, “I will not make a joke about that! Holy hopping horses, when did I become the mature one on this team?!”
    Choosing, after a long and indecisive moment, not to answer the unspoken questions—or assumptions of lunacy—written clearly across her opponent's face, Shins sheathed her rapier with a flourish even more dramatic than when she'd drawn it. “This,” she told him almost thoughtfully, as though picking up on a conversation inconveniently interrupted, “doesn't need to be any more painful. Agreed?”
    He nodded vigorously, then winced; apparently even that tiny jostle tugged at the new addition to his hindquarters.
    “Oh, a smart decision! I'm so glad. I was afraid that wound I gave you might've caused brain damage.”
    Olgun burst into silent hysterics.
    “Hmm…” Idly tapping a nail against her teeth, making an obvious show of her nonchalance, Shins allowed herself a moment to examine the alleyway in which they'd been fighting. (If, Olgun pointed out in a surge of amused contempt, one could call what the fellow had offered a “fight.”) Other than cheap brick rather than cheap cobblestone or unpaved dirt, it was…well, an alley. Close-leaning, decrepit buildings, lots of grime, smatters of garbage, and the stench of same—though rather less overwhelming, in the winter cold and blanket of snow, than in warmer seasons.
    It had, indeed, been a poor choice of ground to hold; yards from the mouth, the narrow lane ended in a high fence, presumably marking the border of some courtyard or other private land beyond.
    “Dived in without looking,” she commented, idly pacing. “Got more than you expected, yes?”
    She'd meant it as a throwaway comment, a casual taunt at a big, rugged-looking fellow who had just been laid low (and made to sit funny) by a teenage girl. It required neither Olgun's aid, however, nor her years of experience dealing with the most disreputable scumDavillon could belch up, to recognize the knowing, almost guilty look that flickered across his grimacing face.
    “But you did expect it, didn't you?” It wasn't a surprise to her, really. She'd known from Olgun's earliest warning that he'd been deliberately following them, and a lifetime of what some might call paranoia but others would recognize as hard-won experience had suggested the target probably wasn't the young monk.
    Yet, for all that she'd expected it, she felt her stomach clench and her soul shrivel at the implications; felt the embers of rage she'd been nursing since Davillon, fueled by guilt and fanned by hate, flare once more.
    “Why were you following me?” She only realized after she'd spoken that her voice had dropped to little more than a whisper—or a soft growl.
    “Following? No, I wasn't! I was just—”
    Shins took two steps to the side, flipped the man's discarded blade into the air with a foot, then—accompanied by the telltale prickle of Olgun's assistance—caught it and hurled it in the same movement. It sank into the road by his left hand, sliding so perfectly between the bricks that the handle scarcely quivered before coming to a full stop.
    “Paid to,” he said then, nearly stumbling over the words. “Bunch of us, supposed to watch for you, or at least a girl of your description, warned you were dangerous, none of us believed it…”
    “And you were told to watch Wil…the archbishop's tomb?”
    Had the thug nodded any more frantically, Shins would have expected that his head was trying to pop loose and make a run for safety while she was distracted by the rest of him.
    Any grim amusement at the thought, however, was brief enough.
    Who in Lourveaux knew her that well?
    Even back in Davillon, the people who would likely