I glance up just in time to see Ana clock one of the last men standing with her elbow. He falls back onto the hearth, nearly setting himself on fire.

How any of these witless men survived into adulthood in a city as notoriously unkind as Potosí, I haven’t the foggiest.

In the time it’s taken for Ana and me to dispatch his friends, the first man, the one with the sneer and the missing teeth, has pulled himself up with the help of a nearby table.

He looks worse for wear, though I hardly touched him.

“Back for more?” I twirl my sword, flicking the blood off the tip onto the ground.

The man spits roughly in the direction of my feet. His spittle lands a safe distance away, as he seems too afraid to get any closer. “You’ll regret this.”

I smile sweetly at him. “Doubtful.”

He mutters a curse I don’t quite catch, but then he stumbles out of the tavern, dragging one leg behind him in a noticeable limp.

A resigned sigh escapes me as I survey the damage. The patrons with sense fled at the first sign of trouble—one doesn’t survive in Potosí for long without learning to sniff it out—but there are a few stragglers left huddling against the walls. One absolute legend of a drunk hasn’t budged from his perch at the bar. He’s still nursing the same cup of fermented chicha he was when the fight began.

“You all right, Kiki?” Ana asks. She’s kneeling, going through the pockets of one of the men she took down. There’s blood masking most of his face, and I would bet my father’s entire villa that he won’t ever be getting up again. When she finds what she’s looking for, she stands with a triumphant shout. “Got it.”

In her hands is a purse of crimson velvet, tied together with a garish golden rope. Not the sort of thing these men would call their own. And it isn’t. They stole it. And we’ve now retrieved it. We meant to track them down later tonight, but luck brought them to us first.

Santiago might not feel so lucky when he sees the state of his fine establishment now. Blood drips from the tip of my sword onto the packed dirt of the tavern floor. The toes of my boots are already dark with it. Disaster surrounds us in the form of overturned tables, two smashed barrels of chicha, and a perfectly good roast pig dumped on the ground, its sightless eyes seeming to stare at me in accusation.

I distract myself from the sight of how fetching Ana looks with droplets of blood smeared across her freckles by focusing on the dead man at my feet. The one who all but gutted himself on my blade.

Fool.