Jack blinked once, wiped the blood from his nose, and then rolled sideways, as the blade of a sword swung down and bit like an axe into the grass beside him. He grinned up at the sky and rolled onto his feet, dodging another sword-swipe right before it disembowelled him.

God, she was brilliant! How did you climb walls wearing two hundred pounds of metal without making a sound? How did you leap, kick, somersault, and land facing your opponent, with your sword drawn up, ready to strike his head off before he'd even worked out what was going on?

"It's Valerie, yes?" he said, to the spiky, angry shadow that was bearing down on him. "Valerie Warner? Do you remember me?"

The blade whistled past him again, but he was getting the hang of dodging it now. The broadsword was huge, and she gripped it in both hands, which meant that, every time she swung it at him and missed, she overbalanced slightly, and would be tantalizingly easy to trip up. Of course, you would have to be very quick to ensure that she missed in the first place, and even quicker to dart in and kick her legs out from under her without getting caught up in the ensuing avalanche of metal and flesh.

Still, he might as well try talking to her first.

"We met at Pandemonium once," he said, while Val circled warily around him, her sword drawn upwards, poised for another swing. "You used to spend a lot of time in the armoury, trying on everything at once? I'm glad to see it's a habit you've not got out of."

"There's a sword in that flowerbed just to your right," said Val matter-of-factly. "You'd better pick it up. I give you my word I won't kill you while you're getting it."

"That's very sweet of you, Val, but I think I'd better not."

"It's your only chance to live."

"You know, I should mention," said Jack, clapping his hands together and beaming up at her. "I belong to a sort of band of mercenaries—really good people, and it's profitable work. We could really use someone like you—"

She swung the sword at him again, and this time, he felt it pierce his shirt and graze the skin against his ribs. It was strangely invigorating, like being splashed in the face with cold water.

"Are you going to pick up the sword?" she demanded.

"You know, she wants to go with me, Val. I don't know if that makes any difference to you?"

"She wants all kinds of things that are bad for her!" Val protested. "Do you know you have to remind her to eat? Do you know she'll just read and read until she passes out at her desk, and then, the next night, she'll do exactly the same thing again?"

"Well, see, now we're getting somewhere," said Jack soothingly. "I didn't know that—let's talk about that."

Val lunged at him with a short, upward thrust that could have skewered every vital organ from his stomach to his vocal cords. He avoided it, but not by much.

"Just pick up the sword," she said, through gritted teeth.

Jack was extremely good at recognizing the point where he'd pushed people's patience too far, so he sighed, backed towards the flowerbed, and risked a glance down. One of Val's swipes had neatly decapitated a line of marigolds. There was a sword in there, but it was a lot shorter than Val's broadsword.

He picked it up and hefted it in his hands for a few seconds. It was poorly-balanced too, and this made him sad on Val's behalf, because she was too talented to need such trickery, and it was a shame—although possibly a useful shame—that she didn't know that.

"I'd really better not, Val," he said, throwing the sword down in front of him with some force, so that its blade buried itself halfway into the mud. "I could do you a terrible injury with something like that."

He didn't wait for the sneer. While her eyes followed the sword, he balled up his fist and punched her in the jaw as hard as he could. It probably hurt him as much as it hurt her, but at least it knocked her off balance. As she staggered sideways, he grabbed the hilt of the sword that was still half-buried in the mud and used it to swing himself up high enough to kick her in the face.

Val's head was thrown backwards, but she stayed on her feet, wiping blood from her freshly-bleeding lip. Jack landed on his elbows, rolled instinctively onto his back to keep her in his eyeline, and tried to keep himself from grinning. A kick like that could have snapped her neck in half, and she was still standing!

She stepped forward, hefted the broadsword into one hand so that she was gripping its hilt like a dagger, and thrust it down into the mud beside his ear. Then she kicked him hard in the stomach, making his entire body curl up around her boot.

And as little, bright fireworks of pain burst into life on the inside of his eyelids, Jack couldn't help wondering where she had got those boots, and how he could get his men equipped with killer footwear like that.

"Fair enough," said Val, from somewhere high above him. "It would be over too quickly if I fought you with a sword anyway."

"My thoughts exactly," said Jack, through the eye-watering pain.

He rolled back, regained his feet, and ducked under her next punch. As her arm sailed over him, he balled up his fist and dug his knuckles hard into the soft, armourless area just under her arm. Plenty of flesh protecting her there, of course, but he felt a faint, tantalizing crunch of rib before he whipped his arm away.

Val roared, whipped round with one of those amazing elbows, and knocked the wind out of him. Then she lifted her leg and dropped it like an axe onto his collarbone, with enough force to drive his feet two inches into the mud.

Jack fell to his knees but caught her leg as she aimed another kick at him, pulled her off her feet, and leapt on top of her.

He could taste blood in his mouth now, and there were little white spots of pain flashing on and off in front of his eyes, but these sensations were old friends that reminded him of good times, and, on the rare occasions when he managed to pass a whole month without injury, he really missed them.

He managed to land three or four punches to her face before she threw him off, but she was unbelievably quick for a woman whose head had just been pummelled. She sprang to her feet while Jack was still lying sprawled on his back in the grass.

In the split-second it took him to sit up, she had already drawn the short sword from out of the mud and aimed it with surgical precision at his jugular vein.

She stood over him for a second or two. Blood was pouring from her nose and lips, but her teeth were still visible through all that red mess, because her smile was uncharacteristically broad.

Jack wondered dimly whether she'd stop to gloat or say something along the lines of "I've got you now!" He was happy when she didn't. Much as he would have liked to prolong this moment, it would have lowered his opinion of Val if he'd found out she was a gloater.

She raised the sword for one final swing, and—in the infinitesimal gap between raised blade and onrushing death—Jack flicked back, sprang into a handstand, and kicked up under her chin on the ascent.

Val's head was jolted backwards with a crack. Her sword tumbled from her suddenly limp fingers and hit the ground just a split-second before she did.

Jack landed on his back and stared straight upwards, trying to work out which of the lights above him were actual stars and which were just the tricks of concussion. After a few seconds, he heard footsteps hastening towards him. They stopped for a moment beside Val, presumably to make sure she was still breathing, but then they hurried on to him. His vision was suddenly full of Ellini—pale and blurry, but definitely smiling.

"I did mention the thing about standing with your back to the wall, did I?" he asked, squinting up at her.

"Yes," said Ellini. "I don't think I can do it, I'm afraid."

"It will really make this evening a lot more difficult for me if you don't."

"I think you'll manage," she said, giving him a look of fond exasperation. "Um. That was amazing."

Jack tried to shrug, but his collarbone was still aching, so he settled for an expression of concussed smugness.

"Although there were moments when I was worried," she went on. "Was it really necessary to let her hit you so much?"

"Necessary?" said Jack weakly.

"Sometimes I think you enjoy getting beaten up."

"I don't enjoy getting beaten up," he said, in a businesslike tone. "I enjoy getting beaten up well. If you'd ever met my father, you'd understand the distinction."

He didn't have very clear memories of his father. The man had died when Jack was eight years old, leaving him to the cold, hard charity of the orphan asylum. But he remembered that William Cade had been a ham-fisted amateur when it came to violence—not that a ham-fisted amateur couldn't do a lot of damage against a small boy. Still, if he'd tried harder, there would at least have been some beauty in Jack's childhood home. This was one of the reasons why he'd always liked Robin better than his real father. Robin had all the mercurial viciousness of William Cade, but at least he was creative with it.

Afterwards, he toldhimself he shouldn't have thought that. It all started to go wrong the instanthe thought it. Because it was at that exact moment that a shadow fell overthem, and Robin started to get creative as only Robin knew how.