Her eye caught sight of a glinting thing, spinning. She turned in surprise as a dark-skinned man caught a coin with an open palm. The crowd had parted around him without even realizing it, Sister Marie realized. Like a school of small fish around a larger one. Calm eyes found her own, serene in the midst of the screaming chaos.

...

Francesco caught a flicker from the corner of his eye and saw a coin spinning up – and though it spun so well and high it should have touched the ceiling instead it vanished. There was some hooded figured leaning against the doorsill behind them all, but Francesco barely noticed for the silhouette that’d spun the coin moved like the wind and then Alessandra’s head was rolling on the floor. The man, for Francesco now saw it was a man, paused to take a look at Anselme before killing him too.

One stroke of his longsword, that was all it took, and as the looters began to flee the stranger repeated the process again and again. A look, a strike, a death. The drapier had pissed herself at the sight, though he could hardly judge her since he’d done the same. The man finally turned to him, tall and dark-skinned and with eyes that Francesco met entirely by accident. Within he saw a spinning coin, silver, one side bearing crossed swords and the other laurels. And then it ceased, and laurels was what he came back to himself and knew this to be a glimpse of madness. The stranger’s sword rested against his neck, and he tapped it lightly with the flat side.

“Amend your ways,” the White Knight said. “While you still can.”

- Book 4, Interlude: Bone