“You can jump if ya want,” the lanky one assures her. “It all ends the same, but I think I should like to see such a fall. It’ll certainly make things less of a mess for us.”

“Speak for yerself,” his companion says.

Lexi looks down at the Circus spread far below her, still the picture of serenity, still the steam of dozens of boiling pots pouring from her favorite soup stand.

She has no intention of jumping.

Lexi lets her arms fall and her hands deftly slip over the neck of the reed on the windowsill. She waits until the lanky one’s footsteps place him and his spear directly behind her and then stop.

“Shall I give you a nudge?” he asks, taunting her.

“Allow me,” Lexi whispers, an incantation of strength and will more for her than for him.

She grips the reed’s curved neck with both hands. When Lexi turns, her entire body becomes a fulcrum, beginning at her feet and rotating up through her hips, chest, and shoulders. When she swings the instrument’s wooden belly into the side of the lanky one’s head, it’s with the full force of her weight and power behind it.

His neck crooks awkwardly and his body collapses under it. Even so, Lexi raises the reed above her head and brings it down on him again, smashing him in the shoulder as he falls to the thick rug beneath their feet.

Lexi can’t hear herself screaming. If she could, her own ferocity would shock her.

The half-face is much quicker than he appears. No sooner has Lexi dropped his companion than that heavily inked, disfigured head is looming above her. Lexi cries out and takes another swing with the reed. The half-face doesn’t react with the lanky one’s frozen surprise. Instead he takes an easy, measured swing with his squat ax, its double blade shattering the instrument into several pieces.

Lexi drops the bit of splintered wood she’s now holding and begins to back frantically away.

“Come ’ere,” he bids her, the bald, scarred thing that Lexi is forced to accept is a man. “I won’t kill you right off. I won’t violate you, neither. Nothing like that. That’s not part of it. I just… I just want to smell you a bit first. Smell a proper lady. It’s been so long, it has. So very, very long. Give us that and you can have a bit more time. I do have to kill you, though. No way round that.”

“Why?” Lexi asks. “Why do you have to kill me? What are you doing here?”

“Following orders, miss.”

Lexi stops near the edge of the map-laden table, staring at him, suspicion overriding her fear for the moment.

“Orders? Whose orders? Were you sent here? By who? Are they paying you to do this?”