"Flintbrook is it," the man whom Markus had correctly identified as Von Roberts sneered from the alleyway. He was wearing a vest that seemed festooned with pistols, each one thrust through a leather loop. Each hand held a gun as well and there was a sword buckled at his hip. Most of his crew were armed less extravagantly, though along the same lines. 

"I didn't think you would be fool enough to leave your ship with only a whore and a dwarf for company," Von Roberts' sneered.

"Depends on the dwarf I s'pose," Sketti rumbled in what Emmaline had come to interpret as laughter. The slayer had unslung his axe and was making experimental cuts at the air, his grotesquely huge muscles bunching.

"I think I can see you off, whore or no whore," Markus called back sneeringly.

"Well just in case, I brought some friends, amazing what a few coins will buy you in this town," Von Roberts yelled back. He had a slight lisp Emmaline didn't remember, until she remembered she had clouted him in the face with her pistol the night before. As he spoke Emmaline saw a dozen more thugs materialize in the other alleys leading to the square.

"As it happens, I'm not a whore!" Emmaline shouted, stepping forward and at an angle that brought her closer to a large dirt filled crate which housed a lemon tree.

"Well... not only," she corrected before drawing herself up, "I'm also a powerful sorceress!" The boast drew laughs and snickers from the crowd.

"Mahila..." Rajad said in a warning tone, his eyes seeming to dart in all directions.

"Behold!" she said and then snapped her fingers. Von Roberts vanished in a roar and a gout of powder smoke. Emmaline threw herself side ways behind the planter a moment before several pistols cracked in her direction, one passing through the tree and sending down a flutter of leaves. Von Roberts stumbled back, slapping at his garments. He was alive but everyone of his pistols had misfired at the the same moment, or been encouraged to misfire when Emmaline had used her own pistol spring to use a spell to cut those of Von Roberts. The pirate looked shocked and outraged.

"Kill them!" he snarled, pulling his sword from his belt and waving his men forward. A score of pirates howled their battle cries and charged across the square, pistols cracking and cutlasses brandished.