Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1) by Bryan Choi, E H Carson

Lucatiel passed her twin jian to another soldier. I see fingerprints on the steel and you’re dead , she signaled with a playful wink. They entered the room.
    A dozen Argead soldiers nervously rose from the safety of their cover and trained muskets on their new prisoners. At the head of the group was a man in his late twenties, clad in polished half-plate and heavily armed. He wore the brass sigil of a knight on a chain across his chest and on his pauldrons were engraved a pair of lions rearing on their hind legs. The knight confidently strode forth with a double-barreled howdah pistol leveled at the pair.
    “I thought you’d be smarter than to actually take me up on the offer,” the knight sneered. His eyes flicked between the two siblings and he licked his lips. “Now I’ve got two captives of some renown. Tell your slave-soldiers to retreat back across the river, or we’ll cut the tendons in your ankles and show her what really happens to little girls who think they can fight alongside men.”
    Lucatiel rolled her eyes.
    Aslatiel wanted to sigh with disappointment. These were not the Temple soldiers he sought, just braggarts.
    “My offer is this, Peer of the Dominion , ” he began . “Surrender at once, and you and your men will be allowed to retreat with your weapons and banners intact. Your standing will be preserved in the eyes of your lord. You have my personal assurance of this.”
    The knight laughed, as did his men.
    “You want me to run away like some sort of… eunuch making a back-room deal? You Imperials either have no sense of shame, or the rumors are true and all boys are castrated before they start making seed. Certainly explains all the faggotry in your armies. No, you demonspawn pigs, we men of the Dominion believe in honor and loyalty. Something your kind wouldn’t understand.”
    Aslatiel shrugged. “Would you prefer to die in battle instead? That can be arranged.”
    “After we cut off your feet, we’ll all bugger you as well. Since you have no manhood it doesn’t make us queer.”
    “Dear brother, this is boring. May I kill them now?” Lucatiel drawled, tapping her foot impatiently.
    The knight shook his gun at Aslatiel’s face. “Silence your whore!”
    “You keep shouting at me for some reason,” Aslatiel sighed, wiping spittle off of his jaw. “But it’s her you should be afraid of.”
    The torches blazing against the walls died without leaving embers. Panicked, the Dominion men reacted with a barrage of musket-and crossbow-fire that bathed the room in murky, dull orange and roiling smoke. The room sank into blackness again.
    “Cease fire, you cockgobblers! You’ll hit me!”
    The men started to cough and gag from the fumes.
    “Did we get him?” whispered a shaky voice.
    “Shut up! They’re still here!” hissed another.
    “Light the torches…”
    Rapid-fire thunder from dual pistols interrupted the last command while white novae flitted around a woman in the center of the room. In the last visions of dying Argead soldiers, Lucatiel moved with stuttering grace, with not a single wasted movement as she sent hollowpoint rounds into their bodies. As abruptly as it had begun the firing stopped, and the room was again plunged into acrid silence.
    “Approach,” Aslatiel said, smiling grimly in the darkness.
    The janissaries rushed into the room with torches while Lucatiel slowly released herself from her end-stance. Her foot eased off Aslatiel’s shoulder, allowing him to rise from kneeling. All of the Dominion men-at-arms had fallen, slumped in the indignity of death with perfect clover-leaf groups of bullet holes in their foreheads. The knight was bent backwards over a barrel, still clutching his expensive pistol as a death reflex.
    “That’s our Leutnant,” said Elsa with an appreciative whistle as she emerged into visibility under an extinguished torch.
    “Did I do well, Aslatych?” asked Lucatiel to her brother as she changed magazines and holstered her guns.