“It is now,” she answered, spitting blood from her mouth. Tassos had no more room for reason. He was furious and half out of his mind for want of Silt, and for fear of what his Bullets would do when he couldn’t provide it. The only language he would understand right now was violence. “A clean fight between the two of us is the only way we avoid a Bullet uprising.”

“Let me take the fight.” Oran moved in close, his face mere inches from hers, his eyes burning with a cold, distant fire. “Let me do this for you.”

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “Even if your hands were completely healed, you couldn’t do this for me, Oran. You know that.”

Frustration showed in the flare of his nostrils, and for the first time in her memory, she knew what Oran looked like when he was worried. His eyes darted down, and his shoulders shifted forward and back before he looked at her again. “Please, Cala. You don’t need to be the one to do this.”

“But I do.”

Pisces looked uncomfortable. “What do you want us to do?” she asked.

“Don’t take your eyes off them,” Caledonia answered smoothly, eyes still locked with Oran’s.

“Understood,” Pisces answered.

“Cala—” Oran started and stopped. “Stay steely.”

“You too.”

With a grim nod, he stepped back. He and Pisces planted themselves near enough that if something went wrong, they’d be ready.

“You have made your last mistake,” Tassos said, raising his fists.

“Every time I think that’s true, I surprise myself,” Caledonia answered, waiting for his shoulders to tell her where he meant to move. He might be as broad as the ocean, but she’d learned to read the ocean a long time ago; reading his shoulders was no different.

He attacked like a snake, coiling back and darting out in a single, brutal strike meant to lay her low. She dodged, twisting around him to deliver two tight blows to his side. She landed them with firm fists and heard the involuntary grunts he made before laughter spilled from his lips.

“Not much without your guns,” he taunted.

Caledonia let the irritation show on her face. Let him think he could read her the way she read him.

He dove in again, twice more in rapid succession. Caledonia dodged the first attack, but the second blow caught her shoulder, shoving her back with such force her teeth clattered painfully together. On his third attack, she bent low, landing a kick in the side of his knee.

Tassos grunted as his knee slammed against the street, and the surprise on his face morphed into anger. He rounded on her, darting forward, forcing Caledonia to retreat faster than she was ready to move.