The assassin's boots scrape over the floor, shards of broken glass and pottery squealing between shoe soles and floorboards. He clips the edge of the doorway as he's yanked through it, an absurd injury on top of the chilling indignity of being yanked from the storeroom like a child's doll from a toy box. Nonetheless, it fails to strike the crossbow from his grip. And then they are three men in the macabre parody of a festival shooting gallery, unlit shapes jerking after whatever sharpest points are most readily available to them.

Flint hardly bothers to aim and fully doesn't straighten at all from where he's bent to loot a last bolt from the dead man underfoot. Overhead, a pot bursts. Below the dusky cloud of powder, Flint squeezes the trigger lever.

The thump they earn in return for it is promising. The sag of the Crow's crossbow is more so.