Stubborn as a mule is my old friend Mama Hog.

I left her to her tasteful paintings and fresh-scrubbed floors and headed north, toward home.

The Missus and I have a standing lunch date, breakable only in cases of extreme emergency. She hoofs it toward home from the dress shop, I make my way from the office, and we meet up at the corner of River and Fane before strolling the last three blocks home.

I reached the corner first and killed a quarter of an hour picking out a yellow peony for my lapel and a red fireflower for Darla. Then I decided to ply my detective skills by slipping down the alley by Sylvester’s Hat Emporium and sneaking up behind my betrothed, who was hurrying down Fane with a decided spring in her step and a brown paper parcel in her arms.

I made it within two strides of her when she slowed suddenly and held the package out beside her.

“For heaven’s sake, take this. It’s heavy.”

I took it, and it was.

Darla turned and grinned. “It’s your shoes. I know the sound of your footsteps, my dear, and I can pick them out of a crowd, even a noisy lunchtime crowd.”

“From now on, I’m going barefoot.” I moved the parcel around and drew her in for a kiss, which is no mean feat when neither party stops walking. We made it brief and managed to avoid any collisions. “How is my favorite wife today?”

“Famished. Someone interrupted my breakfast.”

I feigned surprise. “What mannerless ape might that have been? And what’s in the box? More lavish gifts for your new husband?”

She laughed. “Mostly it’s for the kitchen. I found a silverware pattern I liked. Fireflowers and vines.”

“My favorite.”

My beloved grinned. “You’d be content eating with that old knife you keep in your boot.”

“As long as I’m eating.”

“I got you a new hat, too. You’ll love it. Solid black with a dark grey band.” She turned and adjusted the hat I was wearing. “Elegant with just a touch of roguishness.”

I nodded. “That’s me. Elephant with a touch of robbery. But you aren’t fooling anyone, dearest. Confess. You’re in cahoots with my junior partner, aren’t you?”

We stopped to let a nanny and her pair of shrieking infants pass.

The quizzical expression Darla turned toward me was flawless, right down to the tilt of her head and the barely-raised eyebrows.

“In cahoots how?”

I laid my finger on the hatbox’s ornate stamping. “A new black hat. From Carfax. I’m no hat maker, Darla dear, but I know how they rank, and this is the top of the pile.”

“You need a new hat.”

“For our cruise on Evis’s new boat. Since we’ll be rubbing well-dressed elbows with the upper crusts of Rannit’s worthies.”

“Will it help if I flutter my eyelashes and pretend I’ve never heard of Evis?”

“Nope. When did Gertriss tell you?”

“Yesterday. I got myself an evening gown. Black as a crow’s feather. Slit up the side, up to here.” She indicated a spot high up on her right hip.

“You’ll cause a riot.”

She laughed. “Well, if I do, you’re being paid to quell it. Speaking of being paid, how much did you manage to drag out of the poor pale soul?”

“A thousand crowns. In gold.”

She clutched my arm and danced a step.

“A thousand?”

I nodded. “Easy. Without that arm, my suit won’t hang straight. Yes. We’re rich, my dear. Almost rich enough to buy hats from Carfax and gowns from-”

“Eloise’s.”

“Eloise’s, then. So, what’s for lunch? Caviar and hundred-year-old brandy?”

“Sandwiches. Ham. Two slices, since we’re rich.”

I kissed her cheek. “See how quickly decadence takes over? Next we’ll be hiring servants to fan our brows and sleeping on pillows stuffed with money.”

We stopped on the corner while a blue-capped Watchman waved a pair of lumber wagons through the intersection. Darla said something but it was lost in the rumble of wagon wheels and the clip-clop of heavy hooves.

A dozen other pedestrians took up positions beside or behind us while the wagons thundered past.

I was still trying to puzzle out what Darla might have said when a slightly-built young woman dressed all in black tapped me on my left shoulder, smiled at me, and plunged a long sharp knife directly toward my favorite kidney.

I dropped my heavy parcel in the vicinity of her toes and slapped the blade away. Her dainty hand darted under mine, reversed, and bore in on my gut. She never lost her smile.

I half-turned and let her put a rip in my jacket and stepped back. She tried to follow and nearly tripped over Darla’s fireflower-embossed silverware and my good new hat.

It was only then that I heard the shrill and rising banshee’s scream.

The smiling woman with the knife heard it too. Buttercup’s volume is in no way limited by her diminutive stature. Her inhuman howl rose up and up, higher and higher, reaching for a crescendo no human lungs would ever approach, much less match.

The woman hesitated.

I had it in mind to rush her. Grab her knife hand, take a cut if need be, but knock her off her feet and put a knee in her gut and hold her knife hand down until someone could grab the blade.

Instead, Darla, my newlywed wife, simply grabbed the woman by her hair and threw her into the street.

One brief shriek and it was over. The driver of the wagon that ran my would-be murderess down never slowed and certainly didn’t halt.

I turned in a quick circle as my Army knife made its way into my hand. People were shouting and pointing. Some turned away in horror. Others crowded closer to the curb for a better look at the ruined body in the street. No one approached us with mayhem in mind or appeared to slink guiltily away into the crowd.

Buttercup’s hair-raising banshee cry faded quickly. I scanned the nearby rooftops, caught a brief glimpse of a tiny, wild-haired figure scampering away.

Darla pressed herself close.

“Are you wounded?”

“No. You?”

“No.” I felt Darla shiver. Watch whistles blew up and down the street. The Watchman directing traffic came stomping our way.

“What do I say?”

“Crazy woman pulled a knife on me. I pushed her away. She fell into the street.”

“What if someone saw?”

“They’ll get half a dozen different stories anyway. I pushed. She fell.”

“What about Buttercup?”

“I didn’t hear a thing. Did you?”

She shivered again. “That woman. Did you know her?”

“No. Never met her. You?”

Darla shook her head. I saw various eyes cast wholly innocent glances down at our parcel so I snatched it up before it sprouted shoes and ambled away.

“She meant to kill you. Right here on the street.”

“Maybe she couldn’t abide black hats.”

Watchmen stormed into the street, whistles blowing, arms raised against traffic. Blood was pooling and spreading around the crumpled body on the cobblestones. I looked but couldn’t see the knife.

A pair of Watchmen shouldered their way through the crowd. I recognized their faces about the time they recognized mine.

“Well, ain’t this a surprise,” said one. He spat on the sidewalk in open defiance of the Regent’s new ordinance against gratuitous expectoration on public thoroughfares. “Markhat next to a body.”

“I reckon you didn’t have nothin’ to do with this, either,” said the other.

“I wish I could say I was just a bystander,” I said. “But today’s your lucky day because I pushed that woman right in front of a beer wagon.”

I returned Darla’s fierce hug and put the parcel in her hands. “Go on home,” I said as the Watchmen exchanged frowns and put themselves on either side of me. “This is likely to take all day.”

Evis paced, a wine glass of something thick and dark in his left hand and a Lowland Sweet glowing red in the other.

“And you swear you didn’t know the woman? We’re the only ones here, you know. Your sordid secrets are safe with me.”