The next day Yughi emerged from one of the tunnel exits near Nottingham's Broad Marsh at the edge of the city. Tuck had told him where the city's courtesans gathered (Yughi could not bring himself to use the word 'whore') and he made his way there.

The area wasn't too far from the site of the King's Rest. Further along, that road was a small gardened square with a good view of the Cross Chapel at the top of the hill. Beyond the square were a number of winding streets, this was known as the home of Nottingham's bordellos.

Even as Yughi stepped into the street he could feel that the area belonged to a different city altogether. Furtive eyes watched him from doorways. There were women here and there, stood in doorways, seemingly half-asleep or drunk. The best way to be ignored was to appear non-threatening, this was something Yughi knew.

The other thing he knew was that you wouldn't have to go far in such a district to find evidence of men visiting violence on women. Before Yughi had walked past ten houses he heard the wailing of a woman from a house to his right.

The wail was followed by a meaty crunch, someone delivering a blow with the full force of their arm. Yughi felt his jaw clench.

Yughi had been brought up in Constantinople, between the word of Christ and the love of Allah. He had learned to worship his mother and his sisters, he had learned to treasure women. As an assassin, he had encountered men who knew nothing of this, who regarded women as little more than objects to be used for whatever purpose they deemed fit.

An anger had grown in Yughi at this. The more he learned of men like this, the less patience he had with them. The work he was about to do was not something assassins took upon themselves out of necessity, but it was a work he was pleased to do.

The door to the house from which the noises were emanating was not locked. Yughi threw open the door rattling it on its hinges. This situation was one of few in which Yughi would not require a stealthy approach. Neither would he use any weapons, save for the bone inserts in the knuckles of his gloves.

Inside the house a woman lay on the floor, her nose bloodied, her eye black, her dress torn immodestly. Standing over her was a stocky brute of a man, his face twisted in rage and confusion.

"What do you want?" the man demanded of Yughi. "You're not her pimp."

Yughi did not answer. He just closed the distance between them and swiped at the man with a devastating left hook. The blow nearly took the man's head off, Yughi applied a little control to the kick that followed the punch because, despite his dear wish to kill this man, he understood that a murder would not serve his cause.

The man was not a skilled fighter, he seemed best suited to beating up defenceless women in fact. He could mount no sort of defence to a man like Yughi. The assassin grabbed the man by the shirt and threw him into the unlit fireplace at the back of the room. There was a squelching crunch as the man's cheek and nose collapsed. Blood spurted from the man's nostril and he fell to the floor.

With immense satisfaction, Yughi watched the woman-beater spit half a rotten tooth from his mouth before attempting to stand. The man was now terrified beyond words.

Yughi leaned down over the stocky man and said one word:

"Run."

The man needed no second telling, he pulled himself together and ran off down the street. Yughi turned to the woman on the floor and offered her a hand up.

"Who are you?" she asked guardedly, not taking the proffered hand. "What do you want?"

"I want you to make an introduction," Yughi said, his tone instantly smooth and gentle. "I need to meet the person in control of all this."

"I wouldn't exactly call myself in control," said a woman's voice from the doorway. "Although, I am certainly in charge."

Yughi turned to see a woman he estimated to be maybe ten years older than him, some way into her thirties, anyway. She was possessed of a proud beauty, marred by clear signs of past violence that made her face somewhat lopsided. The odd direction of her nose, the slight narrowness to one of her eyes and the dent in her jaw bone on the left side actually gave her both authority and charm. If she had been a mask of beauty then she would not, in turn, have been so instantly imposing.

She walked into the room, cat-like, every inch self-assured. She was dressed in clothes that were clearly expensive but were not bright or frilly. She looked something like a lady's maid, but more severe.

She came past Yughi and offered her own hand to the girl on the floor.

"Who did this, Ruth?" she asked the girl.

The girl took the woman's hand and allowed herself to be helped up.

"Don't know, mistress," Ruth answered. "He wasn't from town."

"That's because an animal knows not to leave its mess near its bed," the mistress said. "Shows his instincts aren't defective, even if they are brutish. Dudda, take Ruth to my lodgings, let her use the washroom, she can't work like this," the mistress instructed a huge man who was standing in the doorway, keeping watch.

The big man waited for Ruth and trundled off down the street at her side. Putting the slight dark figure next to the huge, rotund one was almost humorous in its incongruity. Yughi may have smiled if it were not for the darkness surrounding the image on every side.

"Do you have a lot of trouble like that?" Yughi asked.

"What do you care, stranger?" the mistress said. "I've never seen you before and I don't at this moment care to see you ever again. If you have so much respect for whores why don't you leave this place of shame and never return?"

"Is that how you see it?" Yughi asked. "A place of shame?"

"What does it matter to you how I see things?" the mistress asked. "What is it exactly that you want from me?"

"Information," Yughi said. "In exchange, I think I can add a layer of protection to this place, keep you and your girls safe."

"I have Osborn and Dudda, and three or four more like them," the mistress said. "Their mothers used to work here, some still do, I can trust all six of them, they're like sons to me. You aren't."

"If they were enough," Yughi said. "Then what just happened wouldn't have."

"Don't presume to tell me what's best," the mistress said.

"I meant no disrespect, I know that things have been hard since the Sheriff was appointed and King Richard left to pursue his crusade," said Yughi. "I have come representing the outlaws of Sherwood Forest. We intend to take the fight back to the Sheriff. We want to offer our protection to all the people of Nottingham, Derby and Lincoln."

"Pretty words," the mistress said, "do you know how many men have told me they loved me, offered me nothing more than hearth, home, loyalty and protection, only to leave me spitting my own teeth into a gutter?"

Yughi did not have a ready answer.

"Of course you don't," the mistress said, her voice dripping contempt. "If you did you would never have come here like this, disturbing the peace, stirring up trouble, and dripping man-promises from your lips. You missed the day I vowed never to trust the word of a man again; your balls probably hadn't dropped on that day."

With that the mistress walked to the door, Yughi had to say something to stop her from leaving.

"Tell me to do something," he said. "Something impossible. When I have done it then, maybe, you will accept my offer of protection."

The mistress stopped, silhouetted in the door frame.

"Do you want to know what I know about lies?" she asked.

"Tell me," Yughi said.

She turned back into the room and came over to him.

"Look at me," she said. "Look into my eyes."

Yughi did as he was told. The woman's eyes were very beautiful, large with smoky green irises. The lid of the left eye drooped a little at the corner, it inflected the beauty of them with sadness.

She studied the assassin's face for a few moments, her face hard as stone. Then, suddenly, it softened. It was as if she transformed from one woman into another. In one moment she was statuesque, hard, powerful, intimidating, in the next, she was soft, frightened, vulnerable, delicate.

She slid a hand around Yughi's head and pulled his lips down towards hers. In the dingy hovel where Yughi had observed such violence, he experienced a moment with a woman like none before in his life.

As their lips parted the hardness came back into her face.

"Look down," she said.

There was a dagger dimpling the cloth at Yughi's stomach, ready to gut him with a single stroke.

"Mistress," Yughi said. "You think I am a fool."

Yughi pressed his own dagger a little harder into the mistress's throat. Just enough for its wicked point to make itself felt.

A moment of alarm came onto the mistress's face, to be replaced at once by outrage.

"I was brought up to love women, mistress," Yughi said, "to protect them. I was also brought up to respect women, never to underestimate them."

"Very well," the mistress said. "Your point is made."

She took a step back, sliding her dagger into a hidden sheath at her waist. Yughi took a moment to stow his own blade.

"I have a cousin," she said. "Promised the hand of the idiot nephew of the Sheriff. The ceremony is due the day after next. The Sheriff intends for his nephew to murder her after the marriage to take the land that comes as part of her dowry for himself, no complications. Deliver her from this fate and we shall talk again."

"Just tell me where she may be found," Yughi said.

"She is being prepared for marriage in the lesser hall of Nottingham Castle," the mistress said. "She is under constant guard, the windows are permanently shuttered and barred."

"Where should I take her when we make our escape?" Yughi asked.

"Bring her to my lodgings," the mistress said, she pointed to a three storey house at the corner of the next street. "Ask for Lady Bess and someone will show you through. Not that you need to know that, if you even attempt to get to her you will be food for crows within the week."

"What is your cousin's name?" Yughi asked. "So I may know I have found the right woman."

"She is known throughout Nottingham as the Maid Marian," Bess said. "I would wish you luck, save that luck will not be enough. So instead I wish you wisdom, to do as I first suggested, leave and never return."

With that, the Lady Bess walked across the road and disappeared back into her house. Yughi did not watch her go, rather he climbed the building's exterior and took once more to the rooftops.