The leader’s sword flashed out. Rosa swept it aside. Her free hand closed around his throat. Her left heel hooked behind his ankle. His back struck the dunged cobbles, a strangled cry ending in a huff of expelled air.

Rosa slammed down her boot and gazed sedately at a trio of hearth-guards who were a touch paler than they’d been before. “Who’s next?”

Malachi tore his attention back to the duel and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Kasamor! You’ve been set up!”

“What?”

Kasamor glanced back over his shoulder, good humour vanished. Aske seized on his distraction. With a cry of triumph, she thrust at his spine.

Kasamor spun around. He teased Aske’s blade aside and struck it from her hand. A heartbeat later he had her pinned against the warehouse wall. He had a generous handful of her expensive blouse bunched in his fingers, and his sword at her throat.

He spared a glance for her companions from the Silverway, now advancing along the alley with blades drawn. “Stay back!”

The foremost, a sallow-faced man with a stubble beard and simple black garb, shrugged. “If Lady Tarev dies, so do your friends.”

Rosa reached Malachi’s side. Her blade dared the remaining newcomers to push their fortune. They hung back, content to wait, or ordered to do so.

For the first time in many years, Malachi wished he’d not abandoned the art of the sword. If nothing else, he should have been carrying a weapon . . . Sure, he’d only have gotten in the way, but perhaps that was better than being entirely useless.

“You can’t kill a councillor and two knights of the Republic,” he said. “Not without consequence.”

“If there were witnesses, maybe,” croaked Aske.

“And it’s not all of you who have to die,” said the sallow man. “You can walk away.”

Malachi snorted. “You’d let us leave? Witnesses?”

“It’s your word against Lady Aske’s. How much is your word worth, Lord Reveque? Valuable enough to make a case for murder before the Council?”

Malachi scowled. Aske’s father had too much influence for any such accusation to succeed. Aske would deny involvement. The violence would be dismissed as the work of opportunistic ne’er-do-wells.

The sallow man was right. Malachi hated it, but he was right. One life or three, and no justice for anyone. He felt sick; sick, and angrier than he had in years.

Kasamor growled in frustration. Letting his sword-point dip to the cobbles, he released Aske. “Never known someone go to so much trouble to win a duel. You want to tell me why?”

Aske massaged her throat and reclaimed her sword. “You already know why. My mother was three days dying from her wounds. My sister’s body was never found. We’d nothing to bury. Her voice echoes through the family vault, but I can’t give her peace.”