Kota's eyebrow lifted and he gave her a genuinely puzzled look; that odd statement, and her lack of any satisfying reaction, had diffused his 'tantrum' pretty quickly. "Wait. What's wrong with women?"
After all, she was a woman. But not only that, Kota was, in general, rather confused when people threw around the word "woman" like it was an insult--as these mainlanders often did. Clearly, they had never been to Thanatos. For to him, to be called womanly was a positive thing: women were strong, brave, and tough, capable of bearing children and bleeding for a week and surviving both. There was nothing soft-bellied about that. And that was just the average woman! That wasn't even getting into the warriors, the leaders, the necromancers...
Mainlanders were odd.
Perhaps that was why, in the end, Kota let out a long sigh, rolled his stiff shoulders, and started to row. Things were different out here. He just had to accept that. Though how or why a woman would disparage other women was beyond him.
"Yeah, yeah. Aye aye, captain," he said, and gave an awkward salute--or the best salute he could manage without taking his hands off the oars. Ugh, he wasn't normally so combative, but that 'mutt' comment, and the disparaging one about women, had made him a little prickly. And he still felt ill and irritable. "So, do you hate other women or something?"