But it wasn’t their clothes that raised my hackles. No, it was the set of their bearded jaws and the squint of their stern eyes and the way the lead man holding the scrap of paper clenched in his fist looked as if he meant to choke it.

I knew those looks.

They were looking for trouble. Worse, they were looking for me.

I stood. Too late to close the door and lock it. They’d seen me, seen me see them and no locked door was going to stop them.

I keep a lead-weighted knocking stick under my desk. But after another look at the burly country muscles of those long, sunburnt arms and a brief wink of steel from under a shirt, I reached up and took my mighty sword Toadsticker from his hooks.

That didn’t stop them, but it did slow them.

I planted myself in my doorway. That would keep them facing me, at least for a moment.

“You gentlemen are walking with a definite air of purpose.”

They stopped, keeping a Toadsticker-length of space between us.

“We’re lookin’ for a finder’s outfit,” said the biggest. He was squat and bow-legged, with a face full of old pox scars and fetid breath that would have set Three-leg to gagging. “A finder named Markhat.”

I gave Toadsticker a casual twirl.

“And what might your business be with this finder named Markhat?”

The man’s piggy little eyes narrowed. I named him Piggy. His companions, two worthies I dubbed Cabbages and Sheep, who might have heard of soap but had never been formally introduced to a cake of it, shuffled and reddened.

“That’s fer us ’an him to ken.”

“Then start kenning. I’m Markhat. Whoa, you-”

I didn’t have time to say anything else. Piggy rushed me, Cabbages reached under his shirt for a knife and Sheep produced an iron shortsword.

I gave Piggy a solid whack under his chin with Toadsticker’s point. That snapped his head back and drew a little blood, and he backpedaled so fast he went down on his sturdy country ass. Cabbages got a kick in his groin, and I just slammed my door hard in Sheep’s face, yanked the door open again and dropped him with a blow to the head from the flat of Toadsticker’s blade.

Cabbages took to his heels and ran blind onto the street.

The thing about ogres and their manure carts is this-they don’t stop. Well, they do if they can and the whim strikes them, but this one couldn’t and didn’t. Cabbages went down squealing under its ogre-hewn oak and iron wheels. The ogre roared and dropped his handles and reached under the cart and yanked Cabbages out, feetfirst, before tossing his squealing, bloody bulk casually into the heap of refuse old Mr. Bull had just put out for the trashwagons.

Mr. Bull appeared from within his shoe repair shop and, by way of saying welcome to Rannit, he began beating the twitching Cabbages with his surprisingly sturdy broom.

Piggy found his feet. I knocked his knife away, shoved him down again and planted the sole of my good right boot directly on his windpipe.

I kept Toadsticker aimed at his little friend Sheep, who was facedown and moaning and showing no signs of anything more ambitious than a bit of profuse bleeding.

“Why don’t we start over?” I pressed down a bit, risked a glance over my shoulder to see if the ruckus had wakened Buttercup. If it had, she was staying out of sight. I thought of her asleep on my bed and pressed on Piggy’s throat just a little harder. “Here in thriving, cosmopolitan Rannit, we greet each other like civilized men, with a hearty ‘good morning, sir.’ Mr. Bull, you’re either going to break your broom or kill him-why don’t you go back inside.”

Mr. Bull cackled, gave Cabbages a savage kick to the head and doddered back into his shop.

“Now, let’s see if you’ve learned any manners, shall we?”

“You bastard.”

I let my boot take a few more breaths away.

“Tut, tut, little man. Assault and foul language. You’re never going to win Citizen of the Year, at this rate.”

I let him turn purple. Then I eased up. Let him gobble for air just long enough to keep him conscious.

“Who sent you?”

He cursed more, tried to spit in my eye, cussed when it fell back in his own. I laughed.

“We’ll see if you’d like to try that with the Watch.”

“Boy. Boy, what ’ere you doin’?”

Mama came bustling up, wheezing and puffing. She had her right hand in her ever-present burlap bag, and I’d bet good beer her hand was clutching that wicked meat cleaver she favors.

“These three worthies came to call on me, Mama,” I said. “They turned mean without so much as a hello. The cheek, can you fathom it?”

Mama glared. The man under my boot paled.

“You. You’s one of Efram Sprang’s boys, ain’t you? Don’t you lie to me, I’d know them Sprang bug-eyes any damned where.”

“Mama? You know this man?”

Piggy tried to speak. I cut him off.

“I knows his kinfolk. Don’t I, boy? Let him talk.”

I relented. Piggy sputtered and coughed. I took my boot off his neck but put Toadsticker’s point right at the base of his fat chin and let him feel it.

“Gilgad Sprang. I’m Gilgad Sprang.”

Mama snorted. “I knowed it. You Sprangs never was long on brains. You come all this way to start trouble, did ye?”

Gilgad, son of Efram, tried to rise. I put him flat on his back with a tiny thrust of Toadsticker’s bright steel.

“I haven’t told you to get up.”

Mama grunted. Her hand was still in her bag. “I reckon he barged in and came at ye, all fists and boots, is that it?”

“Knives and swords, Mama. Without so much as a good morning.”

Mama’s face darkened. “Knives, was it?” She spat. “Like I done said, these here Sprangs is dumber than the pigs they keep. What about them two?”

“We were never introduced. What about it, you? Those brothers, sons, or truly ugly daughters?”

“My boys. Gerlat. Polter. If they’ve been kilt, I swear, I’ll-”

“If they’ve been killed that’s your fault, turnip burglar. You, there. What’s your name?”

I spoke that to a kid who was watching from the sidewalk.

“Itchy. I ain’t with them.”

“I know. But if you want to earn a pair of coppers, go fetch the Watch. They’re probably two blocks north at that place that sells biscuits on the sidewalk.”

“Three coppers.”

“No coppers if you say another word. Scoot.”

He scooted. A crowd began to gather, and Piggy got red-faced and restless when the laughter started.

“You want to tell me why you and your brood pulled knives on me?”

“Go to Hell. Take that there witch-woman with ye.”

Mama cackled.

“Witch I ain’t, Gilgad Sprang. And that’s a bad piece of luck for you, and do you know why?” Mama leaned close and poked his bloody nose with her crooked forefinger. “A witch might be moved to show you some mercy. But not me. You is doomed, and all your kin, and ain’t no way past that now.”

And then she muttered a long string of nonsense words and shook a dried owl in Piggy’s face.

He shut up, something like fear showing in his piggy eyes. I watched a mob of street kids empty his sons’ pockets. Both seemed to be stirring and moaning a bit, and I let out a breath I’d been holding.

It was one thing to summon the Watch when you had three bloodied but breathing assailants to present. But even on Cambrit Street, corpses require a lot of explaining.

Whistles blew, and I heard the hurried clip-clop of Watch ponies and the rattle of a Watch wagon.

Mama gave the head of the Sprang household a good hard kick in the face before backing up a step.

“I’m leavin’. If’n you needs a witness, send ’em to my door.’

“Thanks, Mama. I’ll keep you out of it if I can.” Mama isn’t any more popular with the Watch than I am. Years ago she kneed a Watchman in the groin when he barged into her place looking for a street kid she was hiding in a barrel. Neither she nor the Watch was much on forgetting or forgiving.

“See me when you’re done, boy.”