I understand plenty," Ezra said. I understand a man who profits off stolen suffering and calls it business is no better than the men who did the stealing. Crane, watching this exchange unfold with visibly building fury, seemed to reach some private breaking point. Enough talking, he snarled and raised his rifle. What happened next happened fast enough that Ezra would spend years afterward trying to untangle the exact order of it.
Crane fired. Ezra sideways felt the bullet crack past close enough to hear its passage. Ayanna's answering arrow found its mark before Crane could fire again, catching him in the shoulder, spinning him hard against the rock. Harmon, seeing his hired gun go down, scrambled back toward his wagon with the particular speed of a coward who'd never actually planned on fighting for anything himself. "Stop him!" Anna shouted.
Ezra broke into a dead run, closing the distance before Harmon could climb fully back into the driver's seat, grabbing the man's coat and hauling him bodily back down to the dirt. "Get off me!" Harmon gasped, scrambling, panic, replacing every trace of his earlier arrogance. "This isn't You don't understand. I never wanted anyone hurt. I just You just profited while people froze, Ezra said, pinning him easily.
All the fury of 11 years finally finding somewhere useful to land. That's the whole of it. Doesn't matter what you wanted, only matters what you did. Behind them, the last of the fighting sputtered out. Crane's remaining men, seeing their leader down, and their buyer captured, broke and scattered into the dark rather than press an assault that had clearly already failed.
Crane himself lay slumped against the rock. Arrow still lodged in his shoulder, breathing hard, defeated in every way that mattered. Ayanna approached him slowly, bow still drawn. Arrow already knocked for a second shot she hadn't yet decided whether to lose. 11 years," she said, voice shaking with something that wasn't quite fear and wasn't quite triumph either.
"1 years and you turned every bit of your own pain into an excuse to take from everyone else's. Wouldn't expect you to understand," Crane rasped. "I understand plenty," she said. "I lost my parents that same rotten winter. The difference is I built something out of my grief instead of burning down everyone else's world with it.
Crane said nothing. Had nothing left to say, apparently. Slumped there in the dirt with the fight finally fully gone out of him. "We're not killing him," Ezra said, stepping closer, still gripping Harmon's collar in one fist. "Either of them, they face what they did in front of people. real justice, not just an ending in the dark that nobody outside this canyon ever learns the truth of.
Ayanna lowered her bow slow, though her eyes never left Crane's face. You're a better man than I feel like being right now. Maybe, or maybe, I just know revenge doesn't fill the hole it promises to. His voice softened just slightly. The anger of the last hour beginning to eb into something more exhausted, more honest.
I spent 11 years wanting exactly this moment. Turns out it doesn't fix what happened. It just closes the door on it happening again. She studied him a long moment. Something unreadable moving behind her eyes.