I thank the gods that Wynn noticed it in time.

We had just ordered a late lunch at the Dancing Needle, a tavern near the Plaza of Cloth. It was a nice place, clean, and with good food. We ate there often, and the bartender smiled and gestured towards the smaller dining room in a friendly way when we walked in the door. That private room, with its heavy, sound-muffling door, was one of the reasons that Emlyn favored the Dancing Needle so.

We had just gotten settled around the table in the center of the little room, having hung up our cloaks and, in my case, armor and weapons on the rack by the door, when a young woman came in to take our orders. She was new there, a comely girl with soft brown curls and dark, wide eyes. Emlyn gazed after her appreciatively for a long moment when she went to fetch our drinks.

It was when the girl came back with our drinks on a tray, murmuring, “the food will be just a few moments longer,” that it happened.

I was sitting across from Emlyn, and my view of her hands as she served the drinks off the tray was obscured by his body. Wynn, sitting to the side, saw what I did not.

“No!” he said, lunging out of his seat to knock Emlyn’s goblet from his hand, just as our employer was about to take a sip. “She put something in it!”

The goblet clattered to the tabletop, the red wine within it splashing over Emlyn’s sleeve. The girl’s eyes widened, and she drew a long, slender knife from her bodice.

“Emlyn!” I shouted, hooking the bottom rung of his chair with my foot and tugging hard. He tipped backwards onto the floor, chair and all, and the barmaid’s knife sliced through the air where his throat had been but a moment before.

The girl snarled in frustration, and then hissed in pain as Emlyn’s booted foot connected with her wrist from below, sending the knife flying out of her hand. She aimed a kick at Emlyn’s ribs as he rolled away, and then ran for the knife.

She had only managed a few steps before I caught up with her, lunging over the table and bringing her down to the ground under my weight. I pinned her hips between my knees, but she fought like a wild creature to get free, twisting beneath me until we were face-to-face. I captured her wrists briefly, but she wrenched free of my grip, clawing for my eyes. I growled as her nails tore at my skin and shifted my weight so that I could backhand her hard across the face. She responded by kneeing me in the tailbone as I leaned forward and then throwing her weight sideways against my thigh, pushing the two of us into a sideways roll across the floor.

Neither of us would submit to a pin, and we rolled over several times. She had the upper hand when we reached the wall, and tried to loosen my grip on her by slamming me into it, but I held on. I pushed off against the hard surface, breathless as I was from the impact, and attempted yet again to catch her body beneath mine.

As though he were much farther away than he could possibly be, I heard Emlyn shouting. “Get off her, Valmai! Give me a clear shot!”

I was distracted, and the girl rolled atop me again. She drove her elbow down hard against my stomach, just below my sternum. My lungs emptied at once, and I gasped for air. I felt her weight shift, and realized that she was reaching for something on the ground nearby, just past my head – the knife.

Still gasping for breath, I reached up to grip her shoulders and thrust my forehead up against the bridge of her nose as hard as I could. I was too late to prevent her getting the knife, but she reeled backwards onto her heels, blood streaming freely from her nose, instead of finishing me off. I scrambled up onto my knees and tried to grab her wrist, but she sliced at my hand with the knife and split the skin of my palm.

Her attention was focused on my left hand, and she never saw the right one coming. I balled it into a fist and delivered a wide, roundhouse punch, connecting with a satisfying cracking sound against the side of her jaw.

Too satisfying, as it turned out. Her head snapped sharply to the side under the force of my blow, and she slumped limply to the ground, knife falling from her outstretched hand.

No one said anything for a while, and my choking gasps as I struggled to take in air were the only sounds in the room.

“Merciful Night,” Wynn said, at last, breaking the relative silence. “Is she dead?”

Emlyn crossed the room and knelt at her side, feeling for a pulse.

“Yes.”

He turned to me, pulling a handkerchief out of his belt-pouch and pressing it against the side of my face.

“I told you to get off her, not snap her neck,” he murmured.

“My… Apologies…” I gasped.

“Are you all right?” He pulled the handkerchief away briefly to reposition it before pressing it against my face again, and I saw that it was spotted with blood.

“Fine,” I said, beginning to regain my breath. “And you?”

“The shirt is ruined,” he said, with a sidelong glance at his wine-soaked sleeve, “but otherwise I’m quite all right. Thank you.”

“I don’t think she was one of Sondra’s.” Wynn was holding the barmaid’s knife in one hand, and going through her belt-pouch with the other. “It’s a Valerian blade, not like what they use out in the Barra.”

“If not Sondra, then who?” I asked Emlyn. “Who else wants you dead?”

Wynn looked up at me, raising an eyebrow. “Who doesn’t want him dead?”

We were careful, after that, never to make a habit of eating at any one place too often.

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