Shadow City

by Francesca Flores

  After they left and she’d carried Urill’s body into the store, Aina’s gaze trailed north. She had no idea how many more buildings Bautix would bomb, but if he kept going, then Teo’s apartment might be in the line of fire. Without wasting another minute, she ran toward his street.

  A few blocks away, the heat of the fires had mostly left her, but smoke and ash were still thick in the air. Out of the white clouds ahead, a figure walked toward her, and she squinted, hoping it was him—when he called her name. Her heart leapt and she raced toward him.

  “Aina!” Teo ran the last few steps toward her, becoming visible when he was just a few feet away, and pulled her to his chest in a tight hug—she knew it was temporary, that he’d go back to being angry at her once they were safe again—but she breathed in his scent anyway and tried to hold his warmth to her when they pulled apart again. “What are you doing over here?”

  “I had to get the Inosen out of the safe houses.” She gestured toward the fires behind them. “Bautix did this. I got them out in time, but I had to come get you—if the bombings keep going, your apartment will get hit.”

  Teo bit his lip as he stared at the flames ahead, the sky shrouded with smoke. “That’s why I came, I heard the explosions and when I looked out of my window, I saw where they were. I knew the safe house would get hit.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief at his words; maybe things weren’t perfect between them, but they’d both come for each other now. And they’d make it out of this alive.

  “The Inosen are headed to the safe house at the mines right now,” she said quickly. “We should go there too, but I want to check something first.”

  He nodded, gesturing for her to lead the way, and she glanced at the buildings around them first before deciding—a theater was nearby, the tallest building in this part of the city at three stories high. From there, she’d be able to see a good amount of the city above the flames and smoke; she could see how much more of it was burning, and how much chance the Inosen in other safe houses had to survive.

  The theater only opened in the evening for performances, so the door was locked. She hacked through the lock in seconds with her scythe and pushed the door open into the dark interior.

  Before heading to a set of carpeted stairs on the left, she breathed in the clear, cool air of the theater, blinking white ash from her eyes and shaking some of it out of her sleeves. It was odd, how calm and quiet this place was while chaos reigned outside.

  She and Teo walked side by side up the stairs, the theater opening on their right with a shadowed stage in the distance. At the top of the stairs, Aina stepped through a set of velvet curtains onto a balcony and looked out at the city.

  They were level with the smoke now, so she wasn’t able to see as much as she’d hoped, but she could still take in more than from the ground.

  The fires spread south, only for about a quarter mile, even though it had felt like she’d traversed half the city since leaving the tunnels. From here, she could make out Rose Court north. There were fewer fires there—perhaps Bautix didn’t want to risk killing too many Steels—but the warehouse district, visible beyond the landmark of the train station, was aflame just as much as the Stacks and the Center.

  Squinting, she looked up at the sky, expecting her eyes to water from the smoke. But it wasn’t all smoke—thick dark clouds had amassed there too, promising rain that couldn’t come fast enough.

  The fires, she noticed then, weren’t headed straight north. They curved a snake-like, diagonal path through the city. And that meant they wouldn’t hit Teo’s apartment, which was more directly north. That meant …

  Teo realized it at the same time she did.

  “Aina.” He gripped her arm above the elbow, his eyes wide.

  The same silence, like steadily falling snow, descended over them. Panic rushing through her, Aina reached up, tugging on the curtain, and Teo helped her pull it down. Carrying the billowing velvet, they ran to the balcony.

  “Sweet ice,” she whispered, closing her eyes for a brief moment right before the theater exploded beneath them.

  The blast propelled them outside, nothing but white-hot air behind them. As they leapt off the edge of the balcony, she grabbed on to Teo’s waist, holding on with all her strength as he held both sides of the curtain out like a tent around them. The air caught it for a moment, carrying them to the ground, but as the heat and force of the explosion behind them roared, the curtain turned to cinders in his hands.

  They let go of each other then, their hands over their heads as they dropped the last ten feet to the hard ground. Debris fell around them as they tumbled, rolling across the street while heat seared in the air around them.

  Her eyes opened briefly, in time to see more wood and stone falling toward her. She gripped her hands tighter around her head—right before she blacked out.

  She didn’t know how long she was passed out, but when she woke, it was to someone tapping her cheek repeatedly. Through bleary vision, she looked up at Teo and noticed a stream of blood coating one side of his face.

  And then she noticed it wasn’t Teo tapping her cheek over and over—it was droplets of rain. The sky had opened, and rain fell, darkening everything around them. Mist rose steadily in the wake of the flames.

  Teo held out a hand to her, pulling her out of the rubble. They stood for a moment on shaking legs, neither of them saying a word, then turned to run to the edge of the city.

  25

  The next morning in the safe house in the mines, the quiet was nearly unbearable to Aina. Her ears still rang from the explosions. Her body ached, but her mind was alert. She hadn’t gotten much sleep, since every time she closed her eyes, she only saw fire and destruction. It brought her back to the night of the fire at the Dom. Bautix kept spreading his attacks wider and wider, destroying every home she knew. The city still stood, smoldering and gasping for breath, but for how long?

  She had to go back to the city and make him pay.

  But first, she’d wait for Ryuu to return to make sure the Inosen had everything they needed. The place had dusty crates stacked along the walls, likely having been an underground storage unit for the mines before it was turned into a safe house during the old war. Cots lined the walls and a few small tables stood around the open space. On one of the tables was a tiny statue of the Mothers, covered in dust. The chipped paint made it hard to see details, but she noted their long hair, Isar’s harp held across her chest and Kalaan’s bow and arrows slung over her back.

  A wooden door was at the back of the safe house, leading deeper into the mines, while the exit was up a flight of stairs on the opposite side. Luckily, the safe house had been unlocked when they’d come last night, and so the Inosen had been able to tend to injuries immediately while waiting for Ryuu to bring food and supplies. Raurie had helped, but she didn’t touch any diamonds while she worked. Tannis had assisted her by passing her bandages and alcohol to clean wounds.

  Aina felt much closer to the Inosen now, closer to the memory of her parents and who she’d been when she was younger. A lump built in her throat as she counted how few of them were left. Those who’d been sent to retrieve the Inosen from other safe houses hadn’t been very successful; only about half had managed to save anyone at all.

  Lill had avoided speaking to anyone after learning of her father’s death, and sat in the corner across from Aina and Teo, her hair and face coated in ash, her eyes as blank as those of the dead they’d left behind. Every time Aina had woken during the night, she hadn’t seen either of them sleeping. Now, Teo watched Lill for a long moment, and when he turned to Aina, she was surprised to see tears in his eyes. After his mother’s death, she’d only seen him cry once—at the very scene of it. Her heart ached as she wondered how much of it he kept shut inside. She reached out, intending to comfort him, but then he stood.

  “I’m going to check on my apartment and see if I can find any more Inosen,” he said in a clear voice as he blinked those few tears away. “Will y
ou be fine here?”

  She nodded, and he left a moment later, passing Ryuu on his way out. Ryuu entered along with a couple of maids from his mansion, all three of them carrying baskets of supplies and food. The scent of roasted meat and fresh fruit reached Aina, and her stomach rumbled, but she would wait for the Inosen to eat before taking any for herself. After they settled the baskets on a cot in the center of the room, Ryuu looked at Lill, a worried crease forming on his forehead, and then walked toward Aina.

  “Raurie told me you suggested they all come here,” he said. “Thank you for that.”

  “Of course.” She smiled at him. “It’s the best place for them to be, for now. And I know you’d invite them to stay in the main house if we could trust your neighbors. Maybe the Dom’s employees will stay there, though. We’ve already crowded the Inosen enough.”

  “And what about you? I know you haven’t really rested.”

  She shrugged, fending off any thoughts of sleep. “I’m fine. I’m more worried about the Inosen.”

  At the same time, they looked toward Lill, who sat with her knees pulled up to her chest. In a whisper, Ryuu asked, “Has she spoken to anyone yet? She should eat something, at least.”

  When Aina shook her head, Ryuu sighed and then walked toward Lill. Aina didn’t want to eavesdrop, but their strained whispers carried across the room where everyone else was mostly quietly working.

  “Lill,” Ryuu said, kneeling next to her. He leaned toward her as if to give her a hug, but stopped when she looked up at him, her eyes fierce despite the tears resting there. “This was all Bautix’s doing, but you’ll be safe here and—”

  “Stop,” she breathed out, and Ryuu’s words halted abruptly. “I appreciate you opening the safe house to us and bringing us supplies, but you can’t fix everything, Ryuu. We’re not safe until Bautix is dead and people who don’t think like him are in power. That’s the only way this will be fixed: making them bleed as much as they do us. That’s what we learned this magic for, isn’t it?”

  When she finished speaking, her eyes trailed toward the ceiling to stop her tears from falling. Ryuu paused for a beat, looking at the floor between them before saying, “On that train, I shot Kohl Pavel. The person who killed my brother, Lill. I know what the need for revenge feels like, and I know it fixes nothing. It might make you feel better for one moment, but all your old doubts and fears come back in the next. Don’t let the desire for revenge take you over, Lill.”

  She tilted her head back down and tears tracked down the white ash still on her cheeks. Ryuu hugged her, his black bangs falling in his face.

  Aina stood then and walked to the three recruits, who’d arrived shortly after she had last night, covered in soot. They all shared a cot now while they ate breakfast, Johana’s little fingers sticky with the juice of a mango. When Aina reached them, they all straightened and waited for her to speak.

  Instead she bent down to give them each a long hug. “I’m glad you all made it back yesterday,” she said, her voice gruff. “Thank you for helping get everyone away from the bombings. Get as much rest as you need, all right?”

  “Thank you,” Kushik and Markus mumbled, surprise lighting their eyes—they probably had never gotten much gratitude from Kohl when he was their boss.

  “You get some rest too, boss,” Johana said, and Aina nodded but didn’t reply.

  She left the safe house shortly after—the only way to solve any of their problems was to stop Bautix. She couldn’t do that from here, and certainly not by resting. Ryuu might have a point about revenge not fixing much, but as long as Bautix tried his best to kill them all, she’d keep fighting back.

  She headed back to Kosín, breathing in the crisp scent of the forest around the mines, and knowing she would smell only death when she entered the city. Even after the downpour last night, a hint of smoke still hung in the air, growing sharper the closer she got.

  An eerie quiet permeated the empty streets as she walked through the east of Kosín. Clouds partially obscured the sun, but whenever they moved, sunlight revealed the gruesome scene in stark detail. White ash coated entire streets like untouched snow while gray limbs and streaks of blood stood out among the rubble. Something wet touched her cheek and when she lifted a hand to it, she found more tears she hadn’t realized she’d shed. She’d seen a lot of death in her life, but nothing like this—nothing that showed such complete disrespect for life. She walked slowly, making sure she took in every broken body and fallen building, to breathe in the rancid air so she wouldn’t forget it. It was part of her, this city, whether it was whole and safe or burning and dead.

  The civil war was the last time the city had been so quiet. Her parents had kept her inside and so she’d missed what had really been happening. But she’d seen their terror, had known things were bad even though she couldn’t see it herself. Now that she did, she knew she could let nothing stop her—not the fact that they’d failed to stop Bautix’s weapons shipment, and not these attacks that only made people afraid. All of this was a reason to not rest, to fight Bautix until he was nothing. Even if no one else joined her, she’d do whatever she could to stop him, whether that meant using the brute force she’d honed for years or the new blood magic at her fingertips. She’d prove what a girl from nothing could really do.

  Before she realized where she was walking, she’d arrived at the edge of the Center square, opposite the train station. She let out a small sigh. Of course this was where she’d been going. It was the place to look out on the city and feel like she was some bigger part of it than she truly was. And if she wanted to see the damage done, this would be the best place.

  But there was something odd strewn across the ground—bits of wood, arranged in a purposeful way. From the scent of smoke lingering on them, she guessed they were bits of buildings that had been blown apart in Bautix’s rampage. With a pit of dread building in her chest, she skirted around it and entered the train station.

  It was empty, closed in the wake of the attacks, with ticket stands and platforms abandoned. Walking through here was like traversing the ruins of a silent, ancient city. Her breaths and footsteps were the only sounds as she made her way to the stairwell that would lead to the tower.

  When she reached out to turn the doorknob, though, it opened from the inside with a creak. She bent her knees, a knife in one hand—but then Kohl stepped through the door.

  “Aina,” he said, his voice tinged with relief, his bloodshot eyes widening. “You’re safe.” She’d stepped back slightly, trying to conceal her surprise at his reaction as her knife hand lowered to her side. “I saw you coming from the edge of the square. You have to see something.”

  On leaden legs, she followed him up the stairs to the tower like she had countless times when he’d still owned the Dom. For the first time since then, she felt like they were actually working together; they were both appalled by what Bautix had done. She watched him from behind as they approached the window, midday light casting gold on his stoic features. The letters he’d left for her in her mother’s statue flowed through her thoughts now, and it was suddenly easy to believe he’d worried for her safety during the explosions; easy to believe he’d never stopped caring. She let out a low breath as he beckoned her forward, not knowing what to do with that knowledge but knowing that her heart ached at it, and that Teo’s words came back to her now: Because you still love Kohl.

  She shook away the thought and coughed on the smoke as the outside air filled her lungs once more. Kohl pointed to the wooden beams arranged on the ground below.

  There were hundreds of them, pilfered from the buildings that had burned, arranged in letters and words and a single sentence that sent a chill through her whole body:

  Let it be known that our goal is to progress, not to regress.

  Kohl let out a long, slow breath before speaking. “I watched as the Diamond Guards assembled this sentence, not caring at all who saw them. None of them tried to stop the fires or save anyone. They’re his.”


  “How many?” Aina asked in a hollow voice.

  “I counted ninety. Who knows how many more he hasn’t yet revealed?”

  Aina shook her head slowly. “As long as he can convince people that there’s chaos without him, that the city would be safer if he were in charge, he’ll have supporters.”

  Kohl let out a humorless laugh. “And that’s why he won’t ever completely destroy the Stacks. He needs to keep poor people around. He needs the people who are always trying to latch on to the closest thing resembling safety.”

  She turned away from the scene to face Kohl. “He’s planning another shipment the day after tomorrow. He is one step ahead of us, as he proved by putting the fake shipment on that train, and now with these attacks. We can’t let him get any more ahead of us than he already is.”

  Kohl turned back to the window and she noticed the edge of a bandage peeking through the neck of his shirt and covering the bullet wound on his shoulder. He rolled his shoulder back and grunted in pain, and Aina smirked a little. Ryuu had gotten in a good shot.

  Kohl’s eyes trailed toward the Stacks then. The ghosts of flames danced in those eyes, and he went so still, she thought he’d stopped breathing.

  “He tricked us. He must have found out our plan somehow and planted the decoy on our train while getting the real shipment in some other way, maybe on the train from the northwest port rather than the southwest.”

  “Your friend Kerys can’t be trusted,” Aina added, crossing her arms. “She and Bautix are together, did you know? She’s been pretending to be on your side. How do you know she hasn’t told him about everything you’re planning?”

  Kohl bit down on his lip as he gazed out at the city. “Because I’d be dead now if she had. Kerys always has her own plans going on—she doesn’t tell him everything.” Then, with a harsh sigh, he said, “The station is closed right now, but they’ll open it as soon as they can; they need to make money off the railroad they spent years building. I can find out what port Bautix is planning to send the next shipment from. He’s also planning to bring in more fighters to help him take over the Tower.”