The lord thrust the perfectly circular, beautiful badge into Luca’s hand. ‘Take it!’ he swore. ‘I can’t bear to touch it. It is as if he put a target on my heart.’

‘Why would he do such a thing?’

‘To warn me. To boast that he could have killed me. It’s how they work. It’s what they do. They warn you, and the next time they come, they kill you.’

‘Who?’ Freize asked. ‘Who came?’

‘The Assassins,’ the lord said shortly. ‘He has set an Assassin on me.’

‘An Assassin?’ Brother Peter asked, coming down the stairs. ‘An Assassin has been in the inn?’

Isolde and Ishraq, disturbed by the noise, came out of their attic bedroom, and stood at the doorway, their capes thrown over their night gowns. ‘What’s happening?’ Isolde demanded, coming down the stairs.

Luca turned to her. ‘Someone got into the inn last night, and left Milord a message. A threat.’

Freize was watching Ishraq, on the steps above them all. She was quite still, her face impassive; she was looking at the lord.

‘How did he get in?’ Isolde asked.

Slowly, as if she felt his gaze upon her, Ishraq turned her eyes to Freize, and looked at him, her dark eyes revealing nothing.

‘They can climb walls like cats, they can run along rooftops,’ Milord said, shaken. ‘They study for years how to enter a room in silence, how to kill without warning and leave again. They are trained killers, they take a target and hunt him down until he is dead,’ he broke off. ‘This is a warning for me.’

‘Did he come in the window?’ Luca strode across the room and swung open the shutters and one side squeaked loudly. ‘No, you would have heard that.’

‘The front door is never locked,’ Freize volunteered. ‘He could just have let himself in.’ Ishraq’s gaze was steady on his face. ‘And out again.’

She raised her eyebrows slightly and turned a little away.

‘What does it mean?’ Luca asked the lord. ‘Why would he do this?’

‘It means that I am under sentence of death,’ he said. He exhaled and gave a shaky little laugh. ‘I am a dead man walking,’ he said. Beneath his hood they could see his faint bitter smile. ‘The Assassins have a command to kill me. They will send one of their number, and then another, and then another, until I am dead, or until they are countermanded.’

‘What are the Assassins?’ Isolde asked, coming down the last steps, Ishraq following her. ‘Who are they?’