“You know what they’ll do to me if you alert them. You know what they’ll allow your new brothers and sisters to do to me.”

Evie nods.

The Sicclunan agent drops her chin, pressing the flesh of her neck into the tip of the punch dagger until a droplet of blood forms, becoming a thin trail that runs down the center of the blade.

“Then your choices are considerably narrowed,” she says to Evie.

“I don’t want your life, either.”

Evie curls her fingers around the woman’s fist and deftly pries the punch dagger’s handle loose. She grips the weapon between her own knuckles, holding it half an inch from the gently throbbing vein in the woman’s neck.

Evie juts her head in the direction of the cellar window. “You go out through there. Now. This mission you’ve failed. There’ll be others.”

She sees the resistance in the Sicclunan’s otherworldly eyes. Evie can almost hear the other woman’s blood rising in violent waves, calling to her to act, to kill this interloper and complete her mission.

Evie’s fist tightens around the handle of the punch dagger.

“Tell me your name,” she commands.

The woman hesitates, but something in Evie’s eyes persuades her.

“Sirach.”

Evie nods. “Sirach. You can die trying in vain to complete your mission today, or you can live to kill Savages and Skrain tomorrow. Choose.”

In the end, even Sirach must see it’s no choice at all. Her body relaxes and her fingers splay in supplication.

She nods, stiffly.

Evie slowly and cautiously backs away from her.

Sirach reaches up and thumbs the blood from her small neck wound. She rubs it with her forefinger while regarding Evie.

“You should come fight for us,” she says.

Evie stops just short of laughing out loud. “I’ll take that as high praise, but unfortunately I’ve made other commitments. Lifelong commitments. You’ll understand.”

“Not really” are the last words Sirach says to her.

Evie watches her disappear through the window without a sound, just another shadow living in seconds and small expanses out there in the night. When she’s gone, Evie kneels and carefully tucks her newly acquired punch dagger inside the top of her boot, draping the hem of her stained, threadbare trousers around it.

Rising, she walks over to the poisoned barrel, picking up the vial where Sirach laid it down. Evie doesn’t make the mistake or sniffing at or otherwise trying to identify the poison inside; it doesn’t matter what it is. She drops the vial and crushes it with the toe of her boot, grinding glass and viscous liquid into the wooden boards of the cellar floor.