Diamond City

by Francesca Flores

  Anyone except a certified jeweler caught with a rough diamond would be executed in the street, as was the law since the war. And if her boss ever found out about her diamond sales, he’d kill her for not giving him a cut of the earnings. He’d saved her and turned her from a helpless street kid into a feared killer, but she wanted more.

  This was her one way to dupe him in a city he owned through blood and bribery. He held freedom over her head. Telling her one more kill, one more bribe, one more job, until she was free to be her own boss.

  “One more diamond behind your back,” she whispered, her breath turning white in front of her.

  When the Blood King had sent her on her first kill years ago, Aina had made a promise to herself and to all the kids without a roof who still yearned to stand on top of the world. She would be the one everyone feared, the girl who made politicians, slavers, gang bosses, and mercenaries tremble.

  She would be the Blood King’s equal. And one day, she would rank even higher than him.

  2

  Her next steps brought her back into Kosín as the sky shifted from pale blue to navy. She passed grime-covered, block-style apartments, then took narrow roads north of the Center until she reached a hill leading into Rose Court.

  When dealing in diamonds, there was a pecking order not to be disturbed. She collected the goods from the mine and sold them to various vendors, who later distributed them at fair prices to magic practitioners through gangs, mercenaries, and kids with hunger in their eyes. Out of the roughly one hundred jewelry shops in Kosín, only one store at any given time would buy the uncut diamonds she carried. It rotated every one to four days, and the chosen shop was only announced through whispers spoken in dark alleys. Luckily, she was always down the right alley and knew exactly where to go.

  The lights grew brighter, and laughter and gossip reached her ears as she ascended the hill, a stark difference from the whispers and shouts littering the south of the city. Between two buildings ahead, she could make out the glint of electric lights from the mansion-dotted hills in the distance. Beyond that still, the Tower of Steel stretched toward the clouds, all black spires and forbidding height under the light of both moons.

  People said the Mothers had created the moons, one red for Kalaan and the other silver for Isar, to illuminate the path to happiness and light, but Aina thought they might be too shrouded by pollution to do any good.

  She paused for a moment to check that her weapons and diamonds were hidden, in case she came across any guards, then joined the crowd on the main road of Rose Court.

  Cobblestone streets glittered under the lampposts that flickered on at night. Floor-to-ceiling glass shop windows displayed silk dresses, leather shoes, decorative plants and rugs, boxed fruits, wine, and other merchandise for prices that could feed a family for a year in the Stacks. A stone fountain ahead was bathed in yellow light from the shops, while a couple of miles south, electricity vanished and plumbing became a myth.

  Each year, this side of Kosín grew richer, and the other side—her side—fell further and further behind.

  Diamond Guards patrolled the streets, the gems of their namesake studded on the buttons and buckles of their jet-black uniforms. They were an extension of the national army, reserved as a police force for the city. Aina’s hand closed around the hilt of one of her daggers by habit; she suspected trouble whenever she saw the guards. Most of the people in Rose Court barely spared them a glance, but Aina watched as a pair of them approached an older woman in a tattered brown dress and patched jacket at the corner of a bank.

  They asked the woman a question in low voices. Her eyes hardened as she replied. In the next instant, one of them pushed her against the wall, pinning down her brittle arms, his diamond-edged dagger at her throat. The other guard turned out her pockets.

  If rough diamonds were found on the woman, they’d shoot her where she stood.

  While any worship of the Mothers was outlawed and meant a prison sentence, selling rough diamonds or using them for magic guaranteed an execution. It was considered a crime worse than faith alone, since those diamonds could be sold as jewels, and using them for magic took money away from the country.

  Coins spilled out of the woman’s pockets instead of diamonds, and Aina let go of some of the tension in her shoulders. The woman could have gotten the money from anything, maybe even honest work, but the Diamond Guards would find a reason to accuse her of theft. In the nicer parts of the city, they became more brutal in meting out punishment, as if to prove to the moneyed industrialists, the Steels, that they were doing their jobs properly.

  Disgust crept through Aina as the guards interrogated the woman. But like all the well-off people in Rose Court, she turned and walked away as if nothing had happened. Not even her boss’s bribes could keep a bullet from her brain if those guards caught her with rough diamonds.

  That was the way of the Steels; they’d let people like her starve in the streets without a twinge of concern, then punish them again for trying to find a way to feed themselves.

  A bell jingled when she entered the jewelry shop. It was small and cramped, but warm. Aina smiled at the door attendant, then browsed under the light bulbs hanging in gold-wire cages. An elderly couple examined jade earrings on a pillow inside one of the glass cases displaying the shop’s best wares. She glanced over another customer’s shoulder at the exorbitant prices diamond rings sold for.

  Aina approached the counter. A bespectacled, balding man measuring a gem under a microscope looked up.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Just looking, mostly.” She shrugged, her eyes trailing over a set of emerald bracelets under the counter next to a sign that read RARE EMERALDS IMPORTED FROM KAIYAN’S DEEPEST JUNGLES! She might make more money if other gems, like emeralds, could be used with magic, but only diamonds worked. “The weather’s a bit rough today, so I’m trying to stay inside.”

  There was the code: rough.

  “I think I’ve got something you might like,” the jeweler said without missing a beat. He withdrew a box from under the counter.

  “Those are nice.” She nodded at the unopened velvet box. From her pocket, she withdrew the pouch of diamonds and unhooked one side of the box he’d presented. It detached. She quickly slipped her diamonds inside before pocketing the newly detached side. There was a set price for a set weight of diamonds. Any more or less wouldn’t be accepted, and she could only sell to this jeweler once until his shop’s next rotation. Any wasted time or repeat visits would draw unwanted attention.

  The box of coins jostled in her pocket while the jeweler disappeared to the back room to check the legitimacy of her diamonds. Her eyes flicked to the door attendant, who shifted her jacket aside to reveal the shiny handle of a gun—a clear message. If she tried to run while the jeweler was examining her diamonds, she’d be shot.

  The jeweler returned and beckoned her closer, casting a nervous glance around his shop for any eavesdroppers. In a whisper, he said, “If you want real coin, you should bring me a black diamond next time. Very rare, very beautiful. I’ll pay you five times for that.”

  Aina grimaced. Of course the Steels placed more value on the beauty of a diamond rather than its practical use as a tool of magic that their people had used for centuries. The value of diamonds had changed from a sign of faith to a sign of how many kors were in your pocket. She nodded, keeping his offer in mind, and left as quickly as possible without running.

  In half an hour, she reached the Stacks with her pulse still pounding in her ears. She never got this nervous when taking out a target, but selling rough diamonds was different. She touched the box of coins and gave it a quick shake. Heavy. She had to return home to collect her pay for the baker’s kill, then wait until morning when the bank opened and she could deposit the money. She didn’t entirely trust banks, but she trusted them more than stuffing her money under a mattress and hoping that a house full of criminals wouldn’t find it.

  More gangs heralded her, knives glint
ing at belts and tattoos decorating muscled limbs. They were the men and women who paid her boss to work near his manor, and they all knew her as his Blade—his killing hand. They had any number of names for her boss: the Blood King, the Durozvy Nightmare, and, after one occasion when Aina and his other grunts had watched him rip out a man’s eyes for spying on him, they started calling him the Surgeon. But she knew him better by his real name.

  Kohl Pavel’s manor stood on the banks of the Minos River that circled the city. He called it the Dom, which meant “home” in Durozvy, his parents’ native language. The Dom was a tradehouse, the name for hidden businesses like Kohl’s that traded criminal services for a price. The manor had fallen into disrepair, leftover from the times when the rich built their homes along the shore before the rumble of trains and the smell of smoke became too much for their sensitive ears and noses. Vines covered most of the wide, two-story building and its barred windows. Willow trees clustered alongside the stark white walls and narrow concrete path from the street to the oak door. It bore all the appearances of a haunted house except the monsters inside were real.

  A couple of Kohl’s workers were poised on the roof, keeping watch even if she couldn’t see them. She paid attention to the ground. Odd clumps of dirt meant bombs. After crossing the yard, she disabled a pair of knives set to fly at her face from one of the trees, then slipped through the front door. Some voices sounded from above, but cold and quiet surrounded her in the first-floor hallway. It was the only home she knew.

  She walked to the second floor where she shared a room with three others who worked for Kohl in exchange for pay, shelter, and protection: another killer, Tannis, who’d smuggled herself into the city on a boat from Kaiyan and who Kohl had picked to join him from the ranks of their old gang; a spy named Mazir who Kohl had found working in a gambling den checking for card sharps; and a thief, Mirran, who’d handled bank and mansion heists by herself until Kohl had brought her into his ranks. But he didn’t call them killers, spies, and thieves; they were Blades, Shadows, Foxes. His tradehouse, his titles, his rules.

  A cool wind swept through the window. It was empty except one bed, where Tannis slept. Aina changed her clothes and washed away any remaining blood, then checked her straw bed by candlelight to see if anyone had put a tarantula or loaded gun inside the sheets while she was out, whether as a test or a joke. She sat and withdrew the box of coins.

  One thousand kors were inside, engraved with their country, Sumerand’s, symbol: a sword and a pickaxe crossed over a slab of rock. She counted the silver fifties and gold hundreds under her breath. Counting them made her feel safer, like she’d achieved something. As long as her bank account was full, she would never starve on a street corner again.

  The door slid open, and she almost jumped. Stuffing the box inside her pocket, she deadened her expression and looked up to see the Blood King, Kohl Pavel.

  After six years of living under his roof, his cold gaze still injected a mix of fear and admiration into her veins. It was easy to see him as the man who’d annihilated every contender in the city so that his territory stood untouchable, who broke necks with his bare hands, who caused grown men to scamper when he marched down a half-lit street. But he was also the man who’d made a home for orphans and outcasts like her as long as they could prove useful. She wondered if he could somehow see through her jacket to the box of traitorous coins.

  “Aina,” he said, his voice unreadable. “Come with me.”

  3

  Aina lifted her hands, and the coins Kohl had given her cascaded onto the elm wood desk in his office. They bounced and rolled onto the floor, where she examined them at her feet. So few compared to the ones in the box in her pocket.

  “The Red Jackals almost gutted me, and I only get four hundred kors for it,” she said as she bent to collect the coins for the baker’s death. She felt Kohl’s eyes on the back of her head as she did. Could these four hundred kors really make up for the baker hitting her with a rolling pin as a child? He’d died by her blade, but the memory of those bruises still ached.

  “The Jackals aren’t stupid enough to actually kill you,” Kohl said. The floor creaked as he approached her. “They know I’d come after them if they did.”

  He didn’t use candles like everyone else in the Stacks. Instead, he used the same electric lamps that the Steels in Rose Court, the factories, and the mansions all worked under, but lamps were only in this room of the Dom. The message was clear: He had more money than any of them. He took 40 percent of the clients’ pay and kept the best jobs for himself. But another message hid underneath the silk trappings of the first. He could give them all of this. He could help them rise, help them move far away from the thugs and orphans and slaves they’d all been. They all knew that if they were going to make it anywhere in Kosín, they needed him more than they needed their own hands and feet. He could keep his electricity, as long as he let them keep their jobs.

  Kohl leaned against his desk, the lines and angles of his face as inexpressive and sharp as a cliffside. A high collar shielded half his pale features from view. He might have been born in Sumerand after his parents had fled the famine in Duroz, but he acted as if he’d been in the famine himself; the hunger never left his eyes. He always wanted more, even after years spent attaining everything.

  At first, she’d thought the rumors must be fabricated. He was surely too young to have wreaked so much havoc. But then she’d seen it for herself outside another tradehouse whose boss wasn’t paying Kohl his commission. There were multiple tradehouses, but the Dom had come first, so any others that opened owed Kohl a cut.

  “Hold him up, Aina,” he’d said in that low voice that always hinted he was about to inflict pain.

  It was a sunny afternoon near the Center where a tradehouse masqueraded itself as a dry cleaner’s shop, but Kohl never worried about starting trouble in broad daylight—he’d bribed the Diamond Guards enough to give him a wide berth. A few people stopped to watch, but most were smart enough to move on.

  The boss was on the ground, where Kohl had kicked him in the stomach and face. Aina hauled him up and turned him around. Kohl’s blue Durozvy eyes narrowed as he approached.

  Brass knuckles appeared on Kohl’s fist, the color clashing with the silver-and-sapphire watch he always wore. Both glinted in the sunlight when his fist swung. She held steady as he struck the boss in the jaw. Bone cracked, blood leaked down his chin, he muttered something about not meaning to offend Kohl.

  “Offend?” Kohl’s eyes had widened in shock. “You haven’t offended me in the slightest. All you’ve done is show me you can’t count money properly.”

  He knelt, sweeping away the dark brown hair getting in his face. Aina couldn’t help wincing a little when he pulled out a dagger in the span of a breath. He was so quick, she’d missed the moment when he took it out. The boss Aina held down whimpered.

  “If you can’t count, I see no reason for you to have hands.” Kohl smiled up at Aina as if this were a fun game. “Which one should I remove, Aina?”

  “The right,” she answered instantly.

  It didn’t matter to her which hand he took, but she could show no hesitation in answering. She’d vowed to show her worth to the man who’d given her a home and a job, who’d saved her from a bombing in a bar when she was twelve. She had to prove she was worth keeping around.

  Kohl might only be twenty-four, but the tales of his reign over the south of Kosín were enough to have spanned several lifetimes. She’d studied him over the years, learning how to be merciless herself. He ensnared children like her whom no one would miss, frightening street kids who were already used to terrors, then offered them the chance to become the frightening ones themselves. She’d latched on to that chance like she gripped her knives.

  But she wasn’t a scared child anymore.

  “You look tired, Aina.” He took a step closer, making warmth rise on her cheeks. “Late night?”

  “No more than usual,” she said with a shrug.
The box of coins inside her jacket jostled, and her heart stopped. She shook the ones in her hand to mask the sound, wondering why he’d brought her to his office. There was always a risk he’d sent his Shadow, Mazir, to spy on her. Sweat dripped down the back of her neck.

  His eyes locked on hers, and she held the stare. No one else in the Dom would dare to meet his gaze, but the unspoken rules of the hierarchy had never seemed to apply to her.

  Kohl nodded, breaking eye contact, and walked around the desk. His back faced her for a moment. Did he trust her enough to turn away from her? Could she really kill him, or had she simply gotten used to calculating ways to put a knife through flesh? Did a jeweler not contemplate how to cut and shape a precious gem?

  “Do you remember a few years ago,” Kohl’s voice broke into her thoughts, “we sat in the train station’s tower, and I told you what an assassin and an arms dealer have in common?”

  “It was the middle of winter and my fingers were about to freeze off, but you wouldn’t let us leave.” She grimaced. “Assassins and arms dealers are nothing but the providers of a service, and therefore we have no reason to feel shame for the deaths we cause.” The words trailed off. Her years on the streets had wiped all sense of shame from her mind regardless, and she knew better than to question Kohl’s many lessons—he seemed to enjoy giving his employees cryptic advice and watching them work it out for themselves—but something about this particular bit of murderous wisdom still made her uneasy.

  Then he turned and smiled, making her forget all her moral qualms. She was safer without them anyway. More deadly.

  “I have a new job for you,” he said. “After my cut, you’ll get fifty thousand kors.”

  Her breath caught. She clenched her fists to keep her hands from shaking. This job would earn her more than one hundred times what she’d gotten for killing the baker. It would be more money than her parents combined had ever earned and more than what anyone in the Stacks expected to see in a lifetime. She’d worked the past six years to keep herself off the streets, and a job like this would practically guarantee that she’d never return.