Evie ducks easily under the girl’s arm and steps closer against her. Their bodies are now less than a few inches from each other. To any casual, untrained observer what follows would look like nothing more than playful struggling between them. It would take an expert in hand-to-hand combat to recognize the skilled feints, blocks, and strikes being traded and countered by both women.

Evie is no longer fighting like a drunken vagrant lashing out in a brawl.

And her opponent definitely does not fight like a peasant serving girl.

Dodging an attempt to pierce her liver, Evie coils her arm around the girl’s, trapping it. Evie twists at the waist with surprising power, extending her right leg and pulling the serving girl over it, throwing her off-balance. Evie seizes the opportunity to drive her shoulder into the woman’s chest and force her into the wall of the cellar.

Evie presses her there, shoving the wrist of her opponent’s knife hand against the serving girl’s chest. The weight of Evie’s forearm traps it there, the tip of the punch dagger’s blade now angled directly beneath its owner’s chin. The serving girl tilts her head back against the wall to prevent her flesh being punctured.

The fight is over, for the moment at least.

“Who are you?” the serving girl asks Evie, breathless. “What are you?”

Evie grins, exhilarated despite the brief life-or-death struggle. “Someone and something very much like you, looks like.”

The woman’s eyes darken. “You’re an agent of the Protectorate Ministry, aren’t you?”

Her body tenses as if she’s preparing to renew the struggle, until Evie shakes her head emphatically.

“No,” Evie assures her. “No, I don’t work for the state. I’m just here to find a friend, one I believe people like those in the Protectorate Ministry put here very much against his will, and very much against Crachian law.”

The girl practically spits. “Laws in Crache bend like cheap blades. They’re meaningless.”

Evie can hear the raw emotion in her voice.

“You’re Sicclunan,” she says.

It’s not a question.

The woman nods.

“A soldier?” Evie asks, and then shakes her head. “No, you’re too good. And you’re too self-righteous to be a hired assassin. Siccluna has its own Protectorate Ministry, I imagine.”

“We are nothing like you.”

“Close enough, by my reckoning.”

Evie falls silent, thinking.

“I understand your mission here,” she says. “I really do. I can even appreciate it. But I can’t let you kill all these people—”

“They’re not people, they’re Savages! They’re the weapons you’ve used and will use to destroy my people!”

“They may be used as weapons against your country tomorrow, but tonight they’re just people. None of them chose this, and many of them don’t even deserve to be here, it seems. So I repeat, I will not let you kill these people.”