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.
They didn’t seem to be stuck. Rather, Chang En seemed to have ordered his fleet to sit completely still. Rin scoured the decks for any sign of activity—a lantern signal, a flag—and saw nothing.
What were they waiting for?
Something dark flitted across the upper field of her spyglass. She moved her focus up to the mast.
A man stood at the very top.
He wore neither a Militia nor a Republican uniform. He was garbed entirely in black. Rin could hardly make out his face. His hair was a straggly, matted mess that hung into his eyes and his skin was both pale and dark, mottled like ruined marble. He looked as if he’d been dragged up from the bottom of the ocean.
Rin found him oddly familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d seen him before.
“What are you looking at?” Kitay asked.
She blinked into the spyglass, and the man was gone.
“There’s a man.” She pointed. “I saw him, he was right there—”
Kitay frowned, squinting at the mast. “What man?”
Rin couldn’t speak. Dread pooled at the bottom of her stomach.
She’d remembered. She knew exactly who that was.
A sudden chill had fallen over the lake. New ice crackled over the water’s surface. The Kingfisher’s sails suddenly dropped without