Gyre blinked a few errant spots from his eye and looked down. At least two of the guards were down, one unconscious on the cobbles and another one writhing and clutching her face. More important, the two thickheads were motionless, bellies pressed against the street and forepaws over their eyes. Ponies or loadbirds might have bolted, but a thickhead’s panic response was to hunker down and let predators break their teeth on its pebbly skin. It would be a few minutes before anyone could persuade the beasts to move. Perfect.

A rope waited, coiled and ready, on the edge of the roof. Gyre scooped it up, tossed the coil over the edge, then stepped off himself. The cord hissed through his hand as he gripped tighter to slow his fall, and he felt the building warmth of friction even through the iron-studded leather glove. Before it grew uncomfortably hot, his feet touched the cobbles, and he dropped the rope and drew his knives.

Six guards outside, plus the driver. The driver was the one who’d been knocked out, his skin scorched from the small blast. The closest guard, writhing on the ground, wasn’t a problem. That leaves five. The next nearest, a young man with gray-green hair, had backed against the carriage, waving his cudgel wildly and clutching at one ear. He blinked and tried to say something as Gyre approached, but Gyre’s ears were still ringing from the blast. Not that it matters. The man only had time to gesture briefly with his cudgel before Gyre extended on his right foot into a textbook-perfect lunge and skewered him through the throat. Four.

That left four, as the young man spun away and painted the side of the carriage with spurting blood. The last one on this side was an older woman with stubby red hair and an angry scar across half her face. She tossed her cudgel aside and drew a long knife as Gyre advanced. Gyre dropped into a fighting crouch, feinted at her right leg, and let her parry and riposte. He twisted under the return blow, his forearm slamming into hers and shoving it out of the way, while his off hand came up and punched his short blade once, twice, three times into her stomach under her ribs. Her knife slipped from her fingers, and when he stepped away she stumbled forward and collapsed onto the cobbles.

Three. Gyre heard the scrape and grunt of fighting as he rounded the back of the carriage. On the other side, Yora and Harrow had emerged from their hiding place in the alley to engage the three stunned guards. Yora, long leather coat flapping, held two of them off with her flashing, spinning unmetal spear. Harrow had somehow ended up in a grapple with the third, her leg twisted around his as he pressed a forearm against her neck. They staggered together along the length of the carriage like a pair of drunken lovers.