“Your father will give me a cell in Baghra and relieve me of my limbs.”
“You’ll have immunity if you lay down your arms now. I give you my word.”
“A Dragon’s word means nothing.” Chang En laughed again. “Do you think me stupid? When has Vaisra ever kept a vow he’s made?”
“My father is an honorable man who only wants to see this country unified under a just regime,” Jinzha said. “You’d serve well by his side.”
He wasn’t just posturing. Jinzha spoke like he meant it. He seemed to truly hope that he could convince his former master to switch loyalties.
Chang En spat into the water. “Your father’s a Hesperian puppet dancing for donations.”
“And you think Daji is any better?” Jinzha asked. “Stand by her, and you’re guaranteeing years of bloody warfare.”
“Ah, but I’m a soldier. Without war, I’m out of a job.”
Chang En lifted a gauntleted hand. His archers lifted their bows.
“Negotiator’s honor,” Jinzha cautioned.
Chang En smiled widely. “Talks are over, little dragon.”
His hand fell.
A single arrow whistled through the air, grazed Jinzha’s cheek, and embedded itself in the bulkhead behind him.
Jinzha touched his fingers to his cheek, pulled them away, and watched his blood trickle down his pale white hand as if shocked that he could bleed.
“Let you off easy that time,” Chang En said. “Wouldn’t want the fun to be over too quick.”
Lake Boyang lit up like a torch. Flaming arrows, fire rockets, and cannon fire turned the sky red, while below, smokescreens went off everywhere to shroud the Imperial Navy behind a murky gray veil.
The Kingfisher sailed straight into the mist.
“Bring me his head,” Jinzha ordered, ignoring his men’s frantic shouts for him to duck down.
The rest of the fleet spread out across the lake to decrease their vulnerability to incendiary attacks. The closer they clumped, the faster they would all go up in flames. The Seahawks and trebuchets started to return the fire, launching missile after missile over the Kingfisher and into the opaque wall of gray.
But their spread-out formation only made the Republicans weak against Imperial swarming tactics. Tiny, patched-up skimmers shot into the gaps between the Republican warships and pushed them farther apart, isolating them to fight on their own.
The Imperial Navy targeted the tower ships first. Imperial skimmers attacked the Crake with relentless cannon fire from all sides. Without its own skimmer support, the Crake began shaking in the water like a man in his death throes.
Jinzha ordered the Kingfisher to come to the Crake’s aid, but it, too, was trapped, cut off from the fleet by a phalanx of old Imperial junks. Jinzha ordered round after round of cannon fire to clear them a path. But even the bombed-out junks took up space in the water, which meant all they could do was stand and watch as the Wolf Meat General’s men swarmed aboard the Crake.
The Crake’s men were exhausted and spread too thin to begin with. The Wolf Meat General’s men were out for blood. The Crake never stood a chance.
Chang En cut a ferocious path through the upper deck. Rin saw him raise a broadsword over his head and cleave a soldier’s skull in half so neatly he might have been slicing a winter melon. When another soldier took the opportunity to charge him from behind, Chang En twisted around and shoved his blade so hard into his chest that it came out clean on the other side.
The man was a monster. If Rin hadn’t been so terrified for her life, she might have stood there on the deck and simply watched.
“Speerly!” Admiral Molkoi pointed to the empty mounted crossbow in front of her, then waved at the Crake. “Cover them!”
He said something else, but just then a wave of cannons exploded against the Kingfisher’s sides. Rin’s ears rang as she made her way to the crossbow. She could hear nothing else. Hands shaking, she fitted a bolt into the slot.
Her fingers kept slipping. Fuck, fuck—she hadn’t fired a crossbow since the Academy, she’d never served in the artillery, and in her panic she’d almost forgotten completely what to do . . .
She took a deep breath. Wind it up. Aim. She squinted at the end of the Crake.
The Wolf Meat General had cornered a captain near the edge of the prow. Rin recognized her as Captain Salkhi—she must have been reassigned to the Crake after the Swallow was lost in the burning channel. Rin’s stomach twisted in dread. Salkhi still had her weapon, was still trading blows, but it wasn’t even close. Rin could tell that Salkhi was struggling to hold on to her blade while Chang En hacked at her with lackadaisical ease.
Rin’s first shot didn’t even make it to the deck. She had the direction right but the height wrong; the bolt pinged uselessly off the Crake’s hull.
Salkhi brought her sword up to block a blow from above, but Chang En slammed his blade so strongly against hers that she dropped it. Salkhi was weaponless, trapped against the prow. Chang En advanced slowly, grinning.
Rin fitted a new bolt into the crossbow and, squinting, lined up the shot with Chang En’s head. She pulled the trigger. The bolt sailed over the burning seas and slammed into the wood just next to Salkhi’s arm. Salkhi jumped at the noise, twisted around by instinct . . .
She had barely turned when the Wolf Meat General slammed his blade into the side of her neck, nearly decapitating her. She dropped to her knees. Chang En reached down and dragged her upright by her collar until she was dangling a good foot above the ground. He pulled her close, kissed her on her mouth, and tossed her over the side of the ship.
Rin stood frozen, watching Salkhi’s body disappear under the waves.
Slowly the tide of red took over the Crake. Despite a steady stream of arrow fire from the Shrike and the Kingfisher, Chang En’s men dispatched its crew like a pack of wolves falling on sheep. Someone shot a fiery arrow at the masthead, and the Crake’s blue and silver flag went up in flames.
The tower ship now turned on its sister ships. Its catapults and incendiaries were no longer aimed at the Imperial Navy, but at the Kingfisher and the Griffon.
Meanwhile the Imperial skimmers, small as they were, ran circles around Jinzha’s fleet. In shallow waters the Republic’s massive warships simply didn’t have maneuverability. They drifted helplessly like sick whales while a frenzy of smaller fish tore them apart.
“Put us by the Shrike,” Jinzha ordered. “We have to keep at least one of our tower ships.”
“We can’t,” Molkoi said.
“Why not?”
“The water level’s too low on that side of the lake. The Shrike’s been grounded. Any farther and we’ll get stuck in the mud ourselves.”
“Then at least get us away from the Crake,” Jinzha snapped. “We’re about to be stuck as is.”
He was right. While Chang En wrestled for control of the Crake, the tower ship had drifted so far into shallow waters that it could not extricate itself.
But the Kingfisher and the Griffon still had more firepower than the Imperial junks. If they just kept shooting, they might cement their hold on the deeper end of the lake. They had to. They had no other way out.
The Imperial Navy, however, had ground to a halt around the Crake.
“What on earth are they doing?” Kitay asked.