An instant of soul-clutching dread slowed her enough for the figure – a flesh and blood man – to grasp her hand. She almost smiled at such a mistaken move and used his resistance to snap a kick to the opposite side of his head.

The man grunted but held on. Kiska lost her grin.

A foot lashed out and cracked against her wounded knee. She bit down a shriek of stabbing pain as the leg gave way. He released her hand as she fell.

‘Don’t struggle,’ he told her.

She stared up at him; here in the dark he was mostly shadow, but there was something familiar about him.

He shook out a slim length of cord and stepped over her. Her every instinct wailed against being bound again, and she lashed out with her good leg, catching him high in the inner thigh.

A loud hiss escaped his lips, yet he bent over her again.

Kiska covered her face, cried, ‘No, please!’ She slipped the knife from the back of her collar. Before she could use it his booted foot came down on her wrist and something hard like a knout of iron smashed against her temple. The cavern’s darkness exploded into a dazzle of red and yellow pinpoints that shimmered and faded slowly.

‘You’ve a few moves,’ he allowed, grudging, ‘but you’re out of your depth here, child. Don’t make me kill you.’

Kiska blinked against the lights befuddling her vision. ‘Who in the Lady’s Pull are you?’

The man ignored her. ‘Turn your back,’ he told her.

She obeyed and he tied her wrists together. Another figure climbed up into the opening and the man moved to his side. They spoke and against the light of the moon Kiska recognized him. The flat, scarred face, cat’s whiskers moustache: the bodyguard of the very man she sought.

She laughed. The men ignored her, continued speaking in low tones she couldn’t catch. The newcomer was sent out again. The Seti tribesman returned to her. He pulled a black cloth from within his cloak. Kiska recognized the cloth and where it would be thrown.

‘I have a message for your master,’ she said as he readied the cloth for her head. The hands hesitated a fraction of a heart beat, continued down.

Darkness enveloped Kiska. ‘The man he met in the garden is dead,’ she said, too quickly and loud for her liking. Her heart hammered.

Silence. The sullen lurch and suck of the surf beneath. Kiska listened: not even the clatter or shift of stone chips underfoot. Nothing. Was he still there? Was anyone? Would they leave her here? Perhaps it was a sort of twisted kindness. After all, she’d be safer tied up here than roaming the streets tonight.

A hand took hold of the hood at its uppermost fold. It gently lifted up and away from her head. Her hair caught at its coarse weave.

A man crouched before her: a long, narrow mahogany-tanned face that appeared oddly seamless, bland even. Sunken, dark, black-ringed eyes. Brown pate shaven but for a long braided queue at his shoulder. A straight slash of mouth. Lips Kiska imagined shattering should they be forced to smile. Her quarry.