The man in the black cocked his head as she rolled herself off the bar and escaped from Hodge’s hold. He continued to enjoy the spectacle as she looked for the exit, but then he took another step back, trying to stand out of the range of her swinging staff, lest she should choose to swing it at him. She came to her small bare feet on the wooden floor as Mhurren leapt from the bar and Hodge advanced on her from her left.<br/><br/>Hodge looked to the man in black with concern and a hint of confusion. How far did he want Hodge and Mhurren to take this? The girl had already put up more fight than any of them expected, but the man in the black offered no reprieve in his eyes for Hodge or the small woman. Hodge’s head pounded where the staff had struck him, and he dreaded another such strike. A small film of sweat building on his neck and forehead as he struggled with the woman. She was beautiful, and the fight she was showing was more than respectable—she had some skill more than he had expected upon first seeing her.<br/><br/>Mhurren approached slowly from the right. His breathing was heavy, partly excited by a fight and partly aroused by having been so close to the half-elf. The more he groped at her and struggled with her, the more he found himself wanting her. His eyes flicked to the man who stood at her back, who was watching with great interest as Mhureen and Hodge came towards her, her staff out to fend them off. Mhurren grabbed at the end of her staff, trying to take it out of her grasp, but she was too quick with it and too strong, something strange for someone as small as she was. Mhurren’s nostrils flared as he thought about breaking her. He would love to have all that strength and spirit pinned and wriggling beneath him. His teeth flashed at her.<br/><br/>But before Mhurren and Hodge could make another attack, the man spoke up. “Very good, very good,” he said. Hodge and Mhurren relaxed, standing a little straighter. “I must admit, when you said you were a blade dancer, I had doubts there was much more to you than a pair of come-hither eyes, but you do have some skill. You do, I must admit.” He said something quietly to Hodge and Mhurren in a language that Miriel didn’t know—perhaps Hellanian.<br/><br/>“I would have been content to put you to work in one of my brothels to have you pay your debt and Eller’s—many upstanding gentlemen of Brightgarden would have paid high value to ravage you, especially with the fight you have in you. But I think that is unbecoming of something like you, isn’t it little flower?” The man kept his distance as he walked in a wide circle around her, trying to keep distance from her staff. “My men will let you go unmolested if you wish. You will still owe me my gold, of course, but I will give you a chance to repay it in your own way and in your own time.<br/><br/>“Or,” he stopped and looked up at her with his bright blue eyes, “you can work for me. You will dance, as you seem wont to do. And you will do other things for me as well—no, nothing so vulgar, my dear. You will be put to work as a thief, as I take it you have some experience from your use of the thieves’ cant?”