Cara dropped an armload of cloak, belt, and sheath, kicking it to the side of the doorway. She paused before the door, naked blade in her hand, gooseflesh prickling her neck. 

The door’s simple rope latch had been pulled into the room, indicating that the occupant wished for privacy, but it certainly wasn’t locked. 

Cara stepped to one side, grabbed the wooden peg that served for a handle, and jerked the door open. 

It swung past with a whoosh of warmer air. She felt the breeze ruffle her sweat-slick bangs as she stepped forward, sword point in front of her.

A lamp burned low on the side table, its trimmed wick throwing shadows and light across the two figures wrestling on the bed. 

The bigger of the pair was fully clothed in dark fabric and grease paint. He sat behind the inn’s guest, one arm wrapped around the guest’s chest and the other clapped around his mouth as they struggled. 

The guest was clothed in a long white night shirt, black grease stains smeared across the snowy fabric, eyes impossibly wide with fright as he clawed at the hand covering his face. A pendant bounced off his chest from the violent struggles. 

He paused his flailing as Cara came in, and the intruder released his mouth to reach for the hilt protruding from the top of his boot. Apparently, the need for quiet and secrecy was over, with her interruption. 

Cara tightened the grip on her own hilt. She moved forward and to the left, trying to maneuver around the bed and guest to reach the intruder before her could kill his victim.

The guest took the opportunity to suck in a deep breath of air—in preparation for a shout, Cara guessed—and the intruder jabbed his fingers into the base of the guest’s neck, where his collarbones met. The guest started coughing spasmodically. 

The intruder disentangled himself with the grace of a cat finished with pets. He rapped the guest on the head with the hilt of his belt knife, knocking him out to lay in a crumpled heap of linen and mussed blond hair. 

The intruder then turned his attention to her. Cara couldn’t see his face; his back was to the window, casting his entire body in shadow haloed by starlight. Lantern light slid down the length of the dagger. 

“Answer me this, at least,” Cara said. “Why not just kill ‘im? Be much less hassle.”

His answer surprised her. “Same reason as you.” A flash of white teeth. “Don’t suppose you’d know where the lad hid it, do you?”

Cara shook her head, clearing her eyes of sweat beads. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Can I really take him in a fight? she thought. She had never learned much swordwork at all, just the basics. 

But after Master had… left… she had kept drilling every evening before bed, all those basic moves. Her wrist twitched in a pantomime of her practices, the tip of her sword moving slightly. 

The drill chant began in her head. Block, parry, strike. Block, parry, strike. Block, parry— 

“Ah. A pity.” 

And then, they began to dance.

The intruder’s chest filled, expanding with air, and Cara quickly raised her dagger to ward the incoming dagger swipe. Block. 

His blade glanced off her longer one, but it was already moving into another strike. Parry. 

The second hit had been harder, jarring her hand and arm as she held firm against his attack. (Some cool part of her mind observed how different this was to her private drills. After all, she thought, shadows don’t hit back.)

And then, without her thinking about it, her wrist moved from the parry into its paired strike, and the tip of her blade ripped the fabric of her assailant’s shirt, just grazing the man’s chest. 

Cara felt the sword tip bump against his sternum and froze. 

The practice dummies she’d once used never had bones to interfere with her dagger before, and air never grated.

Unthinking, she jerked her dagger free of cloth and skin. Blood pooled in the flesh wound, beading.

She’d just injured a man. A thinking, breathing, living person.

Heedless of her staring wonder, the intruder lowered his dagger and touched his chest with his free hand. “Never let it be said that thieves lack honor. I hereby concede the hunt. For the night,” he added. His teeth flashed white against the darkness of his face. “Tomorrow’s a different story.”

And with that, he leaped out the window. 

Cara gaped, then sprang to the ledge, sword poking out into the evening air like she expected to swat a moth with the dratted thing. 

There was no sign of the intruder—the thief, Cara supposed, given his questions—but that meant nothing. He could even be above her on the roof, for all she could see in the twilit gloom of the midnight hour. 

Cara glanced up, catching sight of the blood-darkened tip of her sword. She shivered and withdrew.

A rustle drew her attention back to the bed. The guest had recovered and now sat up in bed, his chest heaving and his eyes as big as the soup bowls Jeffrey served stew in. 

He stared at the sword in her hand. Cara noticed his look and quickly lowered the blade so it menaced nothing but the floor boards.

The guest opened and shut his mouth a few times, coughing before he managed to rasp out, “Are you here to kill me, too?”