All she had to do was kill a person.
“That’s a lot of money.”
“It will be the biggest haul our tradehouse has ever seen.” His voice became smoother, in the controlled and calculated tone he always used when speaking of money. “Why do you think I chose you?”
“I don’t care. Where is the fish? I’ll gut him right now.” She spoke so fast, the words tripped over each other.
“That’s precisely why.” His whisper rose the hair on the back of her neck. “You don’t ask questions. You don’t miss. When you decide to kill someone, you don’t stand there dawdling and playing with your knives. You just do it.”
She shrugged. “Point me to him.”
“It doesn’t hurt that you’re almost as good as me.”
Shifting her weight to one foot, Aina tried to control her temper. Kohl placed his hands on the edge of the desk and said nothing, each passing second of silence putting her more on edge.
“Kouta Hirai.”
She raised her eyebrows. Few names held more weight in Sumerand, let alone the capital of Kosín. About a hundred years ago, the Hirai family had come from Natsuda and monopolized the trade of mining tools. Spades, shovels, wedges, pickaxes, pry bars, sifting implements, and anything else needed to mine were entirely manufactured and sold by them. Twenty years ago, they bought the mines as well and grew their fortune with diamond sales to magic practitioners and mining tool sales to Steels. After the war, once diamonds were prohibited for use in magic, the family’s two young sons, Kouta and Ryuu Hirai, led the country to become the leading exporter of diamonds worldwide. They were surrounded by bodyguards at all times and lived in the most protected part of the city, Amethyst Hill. They were untouchable.
“He’s high up. And the person requesting the kill?”
“Higher.”
Her breath slowed, and she grounded herself by touching the hilts of the scythes strapped to her thighs. Glancing around the office to buy time, she took stock of all the items she’d seen over the years. The clock on his desk ticked down the seconds. The room had little in terms of decoration, only a few gold-wire sculptures and an iron teakettle. There was the stain on the mats where her own blood had dripped when a mark had nearly bested her.
Kohl had bandaged her himself.
“If you’re stupid enough to get stabbed on the job, maybe you shouldn’t be here at all,” he’d muttered under his breath, then handed her a vial of painkiller he’d swiped from a clinic.
He’d clenched his hands into fists as she took it, drawing her attention to the tattoo on his inner forearm: a marking of his original gang, the Vultures. It stood out starkly on his alabaster skin. The black bird of prey’s neck was broken, hung by a string of diamonds that trailed to Kohl’s elbow.
Something had softened in his eyes when she’d winced in pain. Then he’d tossed the roll of bandages on the floor and walked out.
She could never quite tell if he wanted her to live or die.
“This won’t go unnoticed.” Her voice finally came out in a whisper. A piece of hair that had fallen onto her forehead itched with the sweat rolling down her skin, but she refused to move it. Kohl didn’t trust people who fidgeted. Kohl wouldn’t flinch or hesitate. Kohl would get the job done.
He came to stand in front of her, close enough that she heard his breaths. One hand rested on the handle of the flintlock pistol at his waist. When he looked at her like this, she wondered whether he saw her as beautiful or not. She’d prefer if he didn’t—it would confirm she’d succeeded in hiding any part of her that wasn’t a ruthless killer. She wanted him to see her as an equal he could respect and care for, not a pretty plaything.
Her rounded cheeks, the curve of her jaw, her narrow shoulders, had all gotten her into too much trouble as a child. When she’d begun working with Kohl, she’d made sure to cut away the softness and the curves, and turn them into sharp edges instead, so no one would ever think she was weak enough to take advantage of. Years of inhaling glue on Kosín’s sidewalks had left her copper skin dull and gaunt. She kept the dark waves of her hair, a mark of her Milano ancestry, in a rigid ponytail that hung to her shoulder blades. Her weapons hid any remaining weakness—a brace of diamond daggers strapped to her chest, scythes at her thighs, her palms hardened with calluses, and a small brace of blades between the knuckles of her left hand that protruded whenever she punched someone.
But no matter how tough she looked, she knew Kohl only ever saw her as the scared girl he’d saved from a bombing and turned into a Blade. He’d never take her seriously until she was as fearsome and unwavering as he was. Maybe her dreams of being Kohl’s equal were a childish fantasy rooted in the mind of a girl who’d found food, a bed, and a roof and convinced herself anything was possible. Maybe she was just a grunt who’d prided herself on selling diamonds behind her boss’s back but would never amount to anything more.
Maybe he was waiting for her to fail.
“After this job, you can start your own tradehouse,” he said finally. “As agreed, you won’t owe me commission like the others. I trained you, so I trust you to manage it well without my help. I’ll extend my protection to you until you have things running.”
Her eyes widened. One more kill, and Kohl would give her all she wanted. She’d been begging for this chance for years. But he’d never indicated a finish line before, had only told her that the choice to set her free was his and his alone.
Good things don’t happen to girls who come from nothing.
She shook the thought away. It was time to take advantage of what Kohl was offering. She nodded once.
“Choose the best partner you can find. I’ll leave you to decide how to split the payment.”
Aina cleared her throat. “That’s generous.”
“We have to take kindness where we can find it. I assume you’ll choose your Linasian friend. The client has given us a week to do the job before he takes his money elsewhere. If you succeed, you get your tradehouse. If you fail…” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
She was well aware of the consequences. If she failed, she would just be a grunt who’d reached too high, someone unworthy of Kohl’s protection … and then she’d be his enemy. There was no choice but to succeed.
For the only time since she was fifteen and on her first assignment, fear wormed through her at the idea of killing someone. She pushed it away as quickly as it arrived. This was her one chance to rise above what she’d been given at birth, to stake out a spot of power in the city that had tried to take her life—and sanity—from her.
She’d decorate the streets in Kouta Hirai’s blood before she let this chance slip away.
“I’ll get to work.” She turned to leave, but Kohl’s hand latched on to her wrist, a flash of silver cuff links appearing at the edge of her vision. She tensed up at first, then relaxed into his grip. “Yes?”
“This is our biggest opportunity yet, Aina. The world is our oyster and Kosín its pearl. You know how valuable certain gems are.” Her blood turned cold, freezing her veins from the back of her neck down her spine, along her arm to where his hand still gripped her wrist. “Are you going to take this one or let someone else sell it for you?”
She unhooked her hand from his. “I’ll take it all.”
4
A loud boom shook Aina awake the next morning. She sat up immediately, all thoughts of sleep forgotten. The others were already on their feet.
“What the hell was that?” groaned Mazir, Kohl’s Shadow, before pulling the covers back over his head.
Mirran, Kohl’s Fox, crouched in front of the window with the distinctive bright blue hair and gold eyes of Kaiyanis people. “Looks like some idiot stepped on one of Kohl’s bombs.”
Shaking her head, Aina got out of bed. She’d squeezed in a shower the night before and worn her clothes to sleep, as usual, so all she had to do was throw on her jacket, boots, and scarf, then get started on this new job.
“Well, I’m not cleaning up the mess
,” she said cheerfully. They grumbled in response, rolling back under their blankets as Aina closed the door behind her with a soft click.
She walked down the second-floor hall, plain white walls and cold, gray floor surrounding her, past the other bedroom for Kohl’s three young recruits. She’d spent a few years there, training until Kohl trusted her enough to take on real jobs. While they all knew the basics of combat and espionage, he usually preferred that each of them was more skilled in one area than the others—he’d decided Aina would best serve as a Blade. The recruits were already awake, challenging each other to a knife-throwing game that Kohl had surely put them up to. She paused outside the door of the training room and watched as one of them hit the center of the target and let out a triumphant whoop, then she went downstairs.
Kohl’s office was empty. She slipped inside, then entered a side door into the room where they kept ingredients for poisons. She restocked on the poison darts she used, then went to the armory to replace one of the small blades strapped to the knuckles of her left hand that had gotten bent. As she searched for one, her eyes scanned the two-story, circular armory lined with guns and blades of all sizes. Her first job here, before Kohl started training her to be a Blade, had been to pick up weapons from a warehouse in the east of the city. So many arms purchases went through that place, it was easy for Kohl to buy them in bulk with no one asking questions.
After the war, gangs had risen up to turn a profit in the midst of the city’s rebuilding, and Kohl had built the Dom—the first tradehouse. He kept it and all the other tradehouses in the city safe as long as they paid their commission to him on time. Hers, once she completed this job, would be the first that didn’t owe him a percentage of her earnings. The thought made her nerves flutter with excitement, but she refused to let it get to her head. First, she needed to become a weapon, kill Kouta Hirai, and collect her pay. Then Kohl would see her as someone he could respect and fear. And then, maybe he’d be able to look at her and see something more between them than their work.
Most of the city still slept as she headed to her destination, tracing familiar paths up the Stacks’ dirt roads. Her boots slid on streets turned muddy from an overnight rain as she ascended the twisting hills that led to the rest of the city. She soon joined a throng of grim-faced workers headed to the factories, steel mills, and textile plants with their lunches in metal boxes. At a bend in the road that led to a main street lined with tailors, locksmiths, and repair shops, Aina slowed.
An elderly Sumeranian man sat in the shadowed doorway of his home, which was crumbling on one side. Blood dripped from a small cut on his pale arm onto a rough diamond he held between two grubby fingers. Her breath caught at the sight, and hazy memories came: her own parents praying to the Mothers, sneaking diamonds in their sleeves, drops of blood falling on the dirt floor.
Loud voices sounded from the top of the upward curving road. Two Diamond Guards appeared at the bend, talking casually to each other, and began walking down the hill. She imagined them spotting the man, yanking him by the neck with their nail-studded leashes, dragging him to a more public place where they would execute him.
“Hey!” she hissed to the old man, who ignored her.
Like her parents had, he practiced his faith without a shred of fear. Her heart ached when the Diamond Guards punished the faithful—the Inosen—since they had done nothing wrong. But she would run and save herself if any trouble started.
As he held the diamond, the man muttered, “Amman inoke.”
All blood could be used for magic. No matter if it came from an unfaithful person, an Inosen, or a Sacoren—a priest—it all produced the same effect.
But only Inosen who had been blessed by a Sacoren could take blood, channel it through diamonds, and wield magic with that murmured prayer, Amman inoke.
“The Diamond Guards are coming!” she said in a low voice, her eyes flicking toward the approaching guards.
Air rippled around the man, whipping his loose clothes around him. The diamond shone with an internal light through the streaks of blood, and a moment later, the house began to restore itself. Mud brick solidified on the side wall, dry and hard-packed into a perfect corner. While the magic couldn’t cause miracles, cure most diseases, or create things out of thin air, it used the power of earth and blood. It provided shelter, helped grow crops on arid land, stopped blood loss, and cured blood-related illnesses.
Her father had used it to repair a crack in the street outside their house after Aina had seen a woman trip there. Her mother had used it on a local boy who’d been stabbed in a mugging, preventing his loss of blood so he would survive.
Using magic was how people helped themselves when they had no other option.
The man wiped the blood from his arm as the Diamond Guards approached and passed them. He’d tucked the used diamond between his fingers and waited until the guards’ footsteps faded away before finally looking around at her and winking.
Shaking her head, she left him to risk his own life how he pleased. Plenty of Inosen had escaped detection during and after the war, though it was still a fraction of how many had lived before. But something thousands of years old didn’t die out simply because the steam engine had shown its pretty face. While the rich could afford steam and steel, bright lights and indoor plumbing, the poor couldn’t. For many, magic was their best choice. They would pray to the Mothers and practice magic to their last breaths, and she’d never deny them that bit of freedom. But she still wished, for their sake, that they would be more discreet.
If her parents had been more discreet, maybe they wouldn’t have been shot when she was eight. Maybe she wouldn’t have grown up homeless and been turned into a professional killer. But she was proud of her few successes now, even if her parents would hate what she’d become.
They’d always believed life was precious, a gift from the Mothers. She couldn’t help but imagine they’d be disappointed if they knew what she was. She wanted to shout: You died and left me to this city; what did you expect?
As she approached the Center of the city, a train whistle broke the morning air, and smoke puffed above the station to stain the sky gray. The streets turned from dirt to concrete, and more people crowded around her in the early rush to work.
Her mind worked through the details of what she knew about the mansions on Amethyst Hill, the privately hired guards who worked there, and how exactly she might get Kouta Hirai alone. But before she did any of that, she had to ask the only person she really trusted to partner with her and put his own life on the line for this job.
Turning up a side street that wound between apartment buildings, budget inns, and low-end shops, Aina approached a bar with a sign declaring it The Tipsy Fish. Right outside of it was a notice board with news from this morning, the letters freshly inked by the printing press.
A GEM FIT FOR A PRINCESS
The Royal Princess of Linash, Saïna Goleph, is due to arrive in Kosín in a fortnight to celebrate a new, stronger alliance between our nations.
The princess will be gifted with a five-carat black diamond jewel, as a token of our new alliance, at a reception ball to be hosted at the Tower of Steel.
Aina nearly snorted with laughter as she scanned the rest of the article, which went on about how both their countries were moving into the international sphere and wanting to make more alliances and trade agreements. The jeweler had only offered to pay her five thousand kors for a similar gem, but if it was valuable enough to give to this princess, then it must be worth much more. If she ever got her hands on one, she’d use a knife at his throat to make him pay double the market price.
Shaking her head at the article, she entered the bar. It was nearly empty except for a few early-morning regulars. A group of old men played cards in the corner with a cloud of smoke around them. A smile crossed Aina’s face as she took in the person she was looking for—his broad shoulders, the dark jacket he always wore that hid the multiple guns he carried. Seated on a bar stool, he spun a
half-empty mug in his hands and chatted leisurely with the ruddy-faced bartender.
Aina approached and checked that no one was behind her. Then she pressed one foot on a floorboard, making it creak, and threw herself to the ground.
The man rose and fired a gun into the space behind him.
5
The gunshot slammed against her eardrums as the bullet made a hole in the wall.
The bartender dropped a bottle of firebrandy in shock, and glass shattered across the floor. Amid the bartender’s swearing, one of the card players yelled through the haze of smoke, “It’s too early for that nonsense!”
But Aina was laughing loudly from the floor.
“You almost blasted my face off, Teo!”
Teo Matgan rolled his eyes as she sprang to her feet. She wasn’t short, but he stood nearly a foot and a half taller than she did.
“You’re ridiculous, Aina.”
She sat on a stool and spun to face him, grinning from ear to ear. “Buy me a drink.”
Minutes later, Aina was giggling into a mug of firebrandy larger than her head. “Let me get this straight. Someone hired you to kill a lady. You thought she was pretty, so you then proceeded to—”
“Sleep with her, yes.” He nodded with a fond memory in his eyes. “And then I didn’t want to kill her anymore.”
“I bet your boss wasn’t happy about that.”
“I don’t have a boss. He was just the man who hired me. But you’re right, he wasn’t pleased, so I killed him instead. The lady heard about it and paid me, said I’m a model citizen and I deserve to be compensated for my services. I don’t know if she meant the services with my gun or my—”
“Stop, stop, stop!” Aina nearly fell off the stool laughing. The men playing cards in the corner glared at her, so she lowered her voice when she next spoke. “I don’t want to think about your little gun!”
Diamond City Page 3