Amaranth heard the caravan before she heard Monroe's question, and it was to the caravan she gave her attention for the briefest of moments.

The sight of the thing belied the first name Amaranth thought to give it: eight horses and a single wagon - carriage in fact, a ridiculously gilt and cushioned affair with glass windows - made up the caravan; the parts seemed too few to constitute the sum, and Amaranth felt cheated. A crowd of people encompassed it - most on foot, three hanging from the carriage windows: a young woman in silks and lace, clutching for someone outside the carriage and outside her reach, her voice loud, grainy, frustrated; an older woman, hanging from the opposite window, black sleeves fanning about wrists wrinkled as prunes and run through with veins of purple - she reached for something held by a servant; and a little girl with ribbons in her hair, chewing her nails at the side of the first and younger woman. Amaranth found the scene vaguely was depressing.

"Amy, you got a weapon or something to defend yourself? Otherwise this will be dangerous, ya know?"

Monroe, speaking to her, paused in the mouth of the alley a few feet behind her. Amaranth had moved farther toward the scene than she had realized, and she skipped back to him before anyone noticed her.

"Sorry..." She glanced at the caravan, then back at him as though to explain with that glance her reason for stepping ahead. "Weapon, ye say?" He nodded, she shrugged. "Well, if ye mean one on me right now, that I could draw from a sheath or a sleeve or some such place right this minute—”

“And what other kind is there?” Monroe interrupted. “It’s a simple question; yes or no.”

“I can whip one up in a pinch,” Amaranth replied, evasively.

“But you don’t have one on you.”

“Well if yaer gonna put it that way, no. I doan.”

The look Monroe gave her was all reprimand.

"But defense doesn't always depend on swingin' a sword or flail, does it?" Amaranth glanced over her shoulder, saw to her surprise a man in black - the colour did nothing to conceal the richness of his clothes - had peeled himself from the throng and was coming toward them, lead by the woman who had discovered them in the alley; she had her hand upon his arm, and was gesturing in their direction. "I can defend myself, if that's what ye mean by havin' a weapon. I find a weapon rather inconvenient, actually, luggin' it at all times on my person."

She glanced again at the two coming toward them, and Monroe followed her gaze. The woman and man were closer, but their positions were reversed. The woman still clung to his arm, but she had fallen back, and her pace was faltering, her glance confused, her eyes flickering between Amaranth, Monroe, and the man in black. The man himself had thrust himself forward, laid a firm, reddened hand upon the hilt of a sword at his hip. In a moment, the two were scant yards away, and the man snatched his arm from the grasp of the Lady Jaget.

"My wife tells me one thing," he said, loudly, "but these things must be done properly. Who are you? What are you? And have you anything to do with me, Niccoli Jaget?"