Or had we? As I tried unsuccessfully with one hand to reload my pistol, I felt a pressure on my back. I turned and very nearly impaled myself on a long knife-blade. A tense, willowy figure, bare-footed and tumble-haired, stood over me.
"You are Jakka," said Kara in the Tzigane dialect—I could understand simple phrases after my experience with Nikka's tribespeople. "Where is Nikka?"
Dumbfounded, I pointed to the courtyard. She glided toward the door, but Hugh intervened.
"Not so fast," he said. "Whose friend are you?"
She did not understand him, and raised her knife.
"I'll shoot you, if you are a girl," warned Hugh. "Any one who resists—"
"She's all right, Hugh," I called. "She's trying to find Nikka—must have been asleep upstairs. Let her go."
But she did not wait for him to stand aside. With a single leap, she put one of the pillars between him and herself, and vaulted from the window Toutou had escaped by.
"Nothing slow about that girl," said Hugh. "Everybody whole?"
A pistol cracked in the doorway, and the bullet sang by his ear.