Except, he did more or less know. If their employer had ordered the assassination last night, then he’d not want anyone looking into it. He’d be sending a message to whoever had sent Thierry. Even a dead tavern poet was a message today.

Laurent de Barratin probably did know who had sent him, Thierry thought.

He crossed to the bar, greeted Le Futrier, the burly proprietor (no one knew his given name), begged a clean cloth to wrap his cut, and ordered a glass of Barratin wine—because doing so appealed to his sense of irony. Expensive, but the provost had given him money. Spend some before dying?

He turned around, rested his elbows on the bar. Lessieur looked as if he was considering coming over. Thierry hoped he wouldn’t. He said hello to one of the girls he knew, smilingly declined an immediate invitation, and kept his eyes on the door. He had a knife in his belt, but it really wouldn’t help if they attacked him. His better hope was the crowd here. The Barratin guards wouldn’t want to make this public, would they?

He was surprisingly calm.

Then the door did open again and they came in, and he was…less calm. Three of them, after all. He watched them search the room. He wasn’t hiding. They saw him soon enough. Thierry knew what he had to do.

“Look!” he shouted. “Le Futrier, you are honoured. These three are guards of the Duke de Barratin! I just saw them at his home!”

Gave them pause, being identified from the start. He saw them exchange glances. Big men with swords. They had all been big men back at the duke’s home.

“The fuck you were doing there?” Le Futrier asked, genuinely startled.

“Visiting Marina di Seressa,” Thierry replied matter-of-factly, as if it were the most obvious thing in all Jad’s world. He raised his voice again. “She’s staying with the duke just now. Might leave him to be with the queen, though, for the ceremony and the funeral. I saw the duke, too. All in black for mourning, he was. Wasn’t happy to see me, alas. A stranger. Maybe worried for his family?”

His words carried through The Fife’s ground floor. The room went remarkably quiet. People could read tension, and three large, armed men in the entranceway carried weight. Especially today. Why he’d mentioned the funeral.

Someone else pushed on the door, two men trying to enter.

Le Futrier was no fool, and no coward. “Gentlemen,” he called to the three guardsmen, “come in or go out, you are blocking my trade! I have good wine and comely women here, should you wish.”

“And poetry!” Thierry cried, on impulse. “Should everyone wish!” He wanted it widely known that he was here, and who he was. If he disappeared…

There was, gratifyingly, a quick murmur of approval. He had a thought.