Crow snatched up that pistol, then nonchalantly tossed it overboard. She spun around and rammed her fist into Tress’s stomach, throwing her full weight and momentum into the swing. Tress’s breath, drive, and hope were rammed forcibly out her mouth as she crumpled around the fist.
There’s no hands-off way to prepare to take a punch. No conceptual training, no schoolhouse theory. When you get hit, yes, a part of you panics. But a bigger part of you is dumbfounded. The mind cannot accept that such a thing could happen, for nothing in life has prepared it for such brutality. It’s hard to internalize the truth that someone was actually willing to hurt you—even murder you.
That is an edge a person like Crow will always have over others. Her mind accepts these facts easily. She will hurt, and she will kill. She enjoys both.
She was grinning madly as she grabbed the table and slammed it into Fort’s face. It didn’t break, like they sometimes do in stories of bar fights. It was good solid wood, and it thumped against his arms—which were sheltering his broken nose—and sent him sprawling.
Crow tossed the second gun overboard, then looked for the third. It was in Ann’s hands, pointed at Laggart.
Crow’s grin widened, then she gestured as if to say, “Be my guest.”
Laggart started to back away.
“Leave your post, Cannonmaster,” Crow said, “and I’ll shoot you myself. Think very carefully about which bullet you’d rather risk.”
He remained in place. Ann’s arm started to shake. She looked at Crow and saw a woman with nothing to lose. In that moment Ann was the smart one, because she realized that no matter what she did—whether she hit or not—Crow wasn’t going to let herself lose this fight. She’d go back on her word if she had to. What were the Dougs going to do? Tell the king’s marshals?
But at least if she shot Laggart, they would have one fewer enemy to worry about. Ann steadied her arm. She aimed. She fired.
And she missed by at least half a boat length.
Crow laughed, then shoved Ann aside. The scrappy woman came back up with a knife and death in her eyes.
Crow chuckled and slipped something from her pocket. A stubby gun with a very wide barrel.
Tress’s flare gun.
Through the tears in her eyes—still stunned from the punch—Tress saw the captain fire it and hit Ann in the chest. The flare connected with a thump, and her body cushioned the trigger enough to prevent it from going off. So it fell to the deck, and there—hitting tip-down—it released its explosion of vines to wrap around Ann.
“For cheating,” the captain said, tucking the flare gun away. She absently slammed her heel into Salay’s wounded leg, making the woman scream in pain. Crow checked on Fort last—his face was a mess of blood, and he still seemed dazed.
After making sure he wasn’t going to come up swinging, Crow walked over to where he’d dropped his strange magical writing board. Her heel took this next, snapping it in half with a crunch.
Fort cried out. It was the only time I’ve heard him speak, other than to laugh. It was a mournful cry full of primal human grief. He slumped forward, putting bloody hands to bloody face, heaving as he sobbed.
Tress finally understood Crow’s purpose. Killing the four of them might have inspired rebellion among the Dougs; she’d learned from her execution of Weev. Death made martyrs. Humiliation made servants.
The Dougs lowered their eyes when she scanned the deck. Fort’s sorrow turned silent and personal. The ship fell quiet—but it wasn’t the quiet of a night of falling snow. It was the quiet of a hospital room after a loved one died.
Crow had defeated the four best officers on the ship, and hadn’t even needed her strange spore blood. Ulaam was surprised it hadn’t manifested, he told me later. Crow had better control of her ailment than any of us had realized. She’d purposefully kept the vines in, so no one would wonder later whether she was less dangerous without them.
There would be no crossing the captain again after today.
“Cannonmaster,” Crow barked. “Lower anchor.”
“Captain?” Laggart said. “But you said we needed to keep sailing to reach the lair…”
“We’ve arrived.”
“But—”
“A quick piece of advice, Laggart,” Crow said. “If you suspect mutiny, always tell people the trip will end a few days after it actually will. Human nature compels cowards to wait until the last possible moment before they try anything.”
The anchor went down with a rattle of its chain. Crow wasn’t bluffing—we’d gotten close enough, though there wasn’t a precise location one needed to reach to get the dragon’s attention. You simply needed to be within the region he watched. Crow proved this by tossing a letter overboard, held in the traditional glass case, as her books instructed.