The second attacker is on her, slashing with their short sword, almost before Evie can square her posture. She reacts without thinking, feinting and ducking the first volley of strikes and using the push dagger’s blade to deflect the blows she can’t outmaneuver. Her heart is racing and that curved short sword seems to find less and less air between them with each stroke, yet she trusts to her training, the years of endless repetition until her body responded to assault from any angle without the need of conscious thought to guide it.

Evie awaits an opening. She ducks under a slightly too wide, slightly too frustrated swipe of her enemy’s blade and launches a shin up into their groin. The momentary recoiling of their body is all the time she needs to grab the wrist supporting their short sword. Evie thrusts the point of her dagger into their forearm, twice, then aims it at their neck. By the time the black-clad figure’s other hand moves to stop her, the push dagger’s blade is already deep in their throat.

Evie watches the cloth of the mask over their mouth soak through with blood as they sink to their knees. She moves with the body all the way to the ground before extracting her blade. A single hot spurt of the darkest red streaks across her neck and chest. The black-clad figure collapses onto their right side, leaving Evie kneeling above them, her breathing shallow and ragged. She remembers Brio and looks for him in the light of the burning tent above them.

He’s staring at her with wide eyes and a half-gaping mouth.

Evie looks down at herself, the enemy blood decorating her dirty, tattered clothes.

She nods. “That’s right. I’m not that little girl any longer. Now, get on your feet. We have to move.”

Evie pries the short sword from the death-clawed hand of the body at her feet. She turns and rips the other sword free of its victim and former owner’s chest. Kneeling beside Brio, she leans down to allow him to slip an arm around her shoulders, at the same time shoving the tsuka of the sword against his stomach.

“Take this,” she instructs him. “Slash at anything in black that comes near you.”

Brio obeys, holding the sword away from his body as if it were a lit torch.

Evie shakes her head, but there’s no time for further instruction, let alone reprimand.

“We’ll have to run,” she warns him.

“I’ll do my level best,” Brio says, a distinct mock-optimism in his voice.

Despite the last few moments and the dread of what’s to come, Evie finds herself laughing.