Jo's almost sad she left her sword belt, sword, and the daggers in it behind. She's nothing like unarmed, but it's so much easier to get your point through to people here with a large weapon. But that same large weapon would have drawn far too much attention when she was headed in and playing cards, when the last thing she wants is for anyone to notice her more than they had to until she was walking out with her pockets full.

The click of the knife snaps almost all of Jo's attention there, and the fist gets disarmed once, but the use of it doesn't stop there, and the second guy to raise it, with that glimmering of steel catching the sun turns her mouth crooked, her hand going to her chest, flat and "Oh, honey. You still wanna dance?"

It's followed with another click. Two. "Let's dance."

It's anyone's guess where exactly she pulled it from, but her knife isn't small like his. It's a long, thin, pure black, wicked thing; illegal in most places she came from even. A longer-than-normal switchblade stiletto. The guy at her side already has one down, and he's headed in for a second, so she's not too worried about him actually holding his own.

The guy with the knife has the gall to look like she's a child with a stick, and he comes at her with all the grace of a cow stampeding. It's easier all across her life when they do that. He's heavyweight and not expecting it when she feints down into a fast-moving crouch, right under that blade aimed for her, and comes up slamming an elbow hard into his lower back, right about where his kidneys should be under that floppy tunic—following that a second later with a fist to the back of his neck, around the pommel of her blade.

It hurts that way, all the way up to her elbow,
but it's him that goes sprawling between the two.