Chang En spread his arms. “I take what I want when I see it.”
Jinzha lifted his chin. “You’ll want to take this surrender, then. You can retain your position in my father’s employ.”
“Oh, fuck off.” Chang En’s jackal laughter rang high and cruel across the lake.
Jinzha raised his voice. “There’s nothing Su Daji can do for you. Whatever she’s promised you, we’ll double it. My father can make you a general—”
“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