Chapter 24: The New Queen

At sundown, the docks were full of people who did not want to be seen there.

Thirty bosses stood in a ring on the wet concrete, with their crews packed behind them.

Duncan had set up floodlights on two cranes.

Astrid stepped into the circle in her black fighting clothes, her ponytail tight.

Vaughn stood at the edge of it with his arms folded, and he had a new star on his jacket.

"If I step in," he said, very low, "you'll never forgive me."

"I'll never forgive you if you do."

"Then I won't."

"Good."

The woman in the grey fur coat shrugged it off and handed it to one of her men.

Under it she wore a knife on each hip, and she drew them both.

"Rules?" Astrid said.

"None," the woman said. "Until one of us says enough."

She came in fast.

The first knife went by Astrid's cheek, and the second cut her sleeve.

Astrid let it cut.

She caught the wrist behind the blade, twisted it and drove her elbow into the woman's ribs.

The woman grunted and kicked her in the stomach, and Astrid staggered back.

The crowd roared.

They traded blows for a long time on the wet stone, and nobody in the ring said a word.

The woman was good.

She was a head taller, and she had never lost a fight.

She opened a long cut along Astrid's forearm.

Astrid felt the blood run.

She did not look at Vaughn.

She heard him breathing hard at the edge of the circle, and she heard him not move.

She dropped under a slash and swept the woman's legs.

The woman went down on her back with a crack.

Astrid was on her before she could roll, with one knee on her chest and the woman's wrist pinned in her hand.

It was the same hold she had used on Vaughn, on a rooftop in the rain.

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