“You sold your ship to buy her, didn’t you?” the hooded man guessed. “But from whom, and why?”

Wyatt stared at the face beneath the hood-a bleak landscape, a desert dry of compassion. Death was there, a mere breath away; an utterance remained all that separated eternity from salvation.

The bigger man, the one with three swords, reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. “A lot is riding on your answer. But you already knew that, didn’t you? Right now you’re trying to decide what to say, and of course, you’re trying to guess what we want to hear. Don’t. Go with the truth. At least that way, if you’re wrong, your death won’t have been because of a lie.”

Wyatt nodded. He closed his eyes again, took a deep breath and said, “I bought her from a man named Ambrose.”

“Ambrose Moor?” the executioner asked.

“Yes.”

Wyatt waited but nothing happened. He opened his eyes. The dagger was gone and the three-sword man was smiling at him. “I don’t know how much that little girl cost, but it was the best money you ever spent.”

“You aren’t going to kill me?”

“Not today. You still owe us one hundred tenents, for the balance on that job,” the man in the hood told him coldly.

“I-I don’t have it.”

“Get it.”

Light burst into the alley as the door to Wyatt’s loft flew open with a bang and Elden charged out. He held his mammoth two-headed axe high above his head as he strode toward them with a determined look.

The man with three swords rapidly drew two of them.

“Elden, NO!” Wyatt shouted. “They’re not going to kill me! Just stop.”

Elden paused, his axe held aloft, his eyes looking back and forth between them.

“They’re letting me go,” Wyatt assured him, then turned to the two men. “You are, aren’t you?”