Black diamond. Kohl had mentioned something about it too, when she’d collected the money for the Kouta hit. Now the Linasian princess was to receive it as a gift to mark the new alliance between their countries.
Then there were the documents detailing General Bautix’s crimes.
She sucked in a sharp breath as she recalled the pages of names and how Bautix had arranged Ryuu’s parents’ deaths.
A new suspicion hit her. Clenching the newspaper in her hands, she reread the article a few times.
Minutes later, the door opened and Ryuu, Raurie, and Teo entered with breakfast and tea for her.
“I think I know what Bautix’s next step will be,” she said, pushing back the blankets. “I think I know why he killed your parents and your brother, Ryuu.”
“Why?” Raurie asked in a soft voice, as if Bautix might hear them through the walls. “He’s been on the side of the Steels from the beginning. He is one. What does he gain from killing them?”
“Everything,” Aina said. “Ryuu, wasn’t your family wealthy before they even began mining diamonds? That’s not what their original fortune came from, right?”
“That’s true,” he said with a slow nod. “My great-grandparents first got rich by selling mining tools, and then my grandparents finally bought the mines.”
“That’s how you make money, right? Sell the tools, the thing that makes the rest of the country work, and get paid for it. General Bautix used to run the arms manufacturing in the city. He basically had a monopoly on it until he gave it up to become the general. But what if he never really gave it up? Most of the city’s arms sales still go through just a couple of places. There are only a few smugglers who manage to get in more and sell them, but Bautix keeps the Diamond Guards on top of that, probably to prevent as much competition as possible. What if he’s still earning money from his old business and hiding the profits somehow? And if so, what better way for an arms dealer to make money than to make other people want to kill each other?”
The more she thought about it, the angrier she became, and she slammed her fist on the bed. “Now he’s the one who pays the Diamond Guards, so they’re loyal to him, and the Sentinel has grown to rely on him to protect the city from conflict, so no one would think to blame him. But he’s the one who stirs the conflict. He’s basically tricked the entire city into paying him for weapons to fight, and then paying him again to end the fighting so he looks like a hero. When one conflict ends, another one springs up. Teo, what’s one thing you never ask when you’re paid to kill someone?”
“Why they want the target dead,” Teo answered mechanically.
“Exactly,” Aina said as Ryuu grimaced. “But what if their goal isn’t to kill the target? It’s not about who gets killed, it’s about who gets blamed. You always let someone else take the blame when you can. It’s a sort of backup plan to keep you safe.”
Silence settled through the room as her words sank in. Her stomach tightened as she recalled what Kohl had told her years ago: Blame the person who bought the bullets and told the gun where to point.
With a deep breath, she continued, “Publicly, Bautix sends the Diamond Guards to kill Inosen. In secret, he puts hired men to the task of killing Steels—and most of them probably purchased his guns to do their jobs—and then pins the blame on people like me. Why do you think he wanted so badly for someone to turn me in and pulled that sob story about being friends with Ryuu’s parents? So that he could garner sympathy, then pinpoint an enemy, someone for the other Steels to hate and fear. I was the perfect scapegoat. That’s what he did with killing your parents, made it look like it was because of the Inosen attacking the mines. He wanted to stir up trouble. I don’t know how much Kohl knows about it, but I bet Bautix wasn’t happy that Kouta survived, so he kept up the hunt for me and put pressure on Kohl to get the job done.” After she let her words sink in for a moment, she asked, “Ryuu, how did Kouta get this folder?”
Ryuu shrugged and leaned against the desk, his hand resting near the newspaper. “The note in his pocket just said that the folder was left in his deposit box anonymously.”
“Were you invited to the reception ball for the Linasian princess tonight?” Aina asked.
“Yes, they want me to officially present the diamond to her since it came from our mines,” he said with a frown. “Why?”
She grabbed the newspaper, scanned the details below the headline, then unfolded the paper and showed them the front page, her hands shaking a little. What she was about to propose was bigger than any job she’d ever taken from Kohl.
“Bautix must be tired of frying small fish. What’s the only thing that could be more profitable to him than sparking conflict between Sumeranians?” When no one answered, she said, “If he kills the Linasian princess at this reception ball, where there’s supposed to be so much security, it will look like it’s something our government orchestrated, and that’s cause for war. Sumerand has been out of the international arena since the civil war, and Linash has had its own problems. They barely trust anyone outside of their country. We’re both trying to make allies now, but Bautix is going to use this opportunity to turn more profit than he ever has before. It’s called the Black Diamond Project, right? The news article said she’ll receive the jewel at midnight. I bet that’s when he’ll strike. He wants to make a scene, and this is his best opportunity.”
“Do you think the rest of the Sentinel knows?” Raurie asked. “Would they be in on it with him, or do you think we should warn them about what he’s planning?”
After thinking for a moment, Aina shook her head. “I don’t think the general of any country’s military is supposed to have a side job selling guns to anyone who pays. I know the warehouse where a lot of the sales go through. Most of the city’s criminals get their stuff there. But its operations are so big that no one knows who really runs it. If it’s him, and he’s arming all the city’s gangs and tradehouses as well as the army and Diamond Guards, don’t you think that’s a conflict of interest? But whether they know or not, we don’t exactly have time to set up a meeting with them and find out. The reception ball is tonight. I say we stop the assassination and then see who in the Sentinel is on our side.”
She rushed her words near the end, adrenaline pounding through her as fiercely as during any fight. If they let the princess die and risked a war starting, only more people would die, and the person orchestrating it all would get away with it. Her head cleared, her mistakes of last night momentarily forgotten. Maybe this was something she could do right.
Instead of being a blight on this city, she could be a cure. Instead of being a tool to men like Kohl and Bautix, she would knock them down and put them in their place.
This was something she could claim for herself.
She took a deep breath and locked eyes with each of them. A spark of anticipation flashed through Ryuu’s eyes when he met hers, as if he could predict what she was about to say next. Teo’s words came back to her, telling her to decide what was important to her and put her mind to it entirely. These were her allies now, people who wanted to believe in something and fight for it. Not Kohl—not anymore.
As she opened her mouth to tell them her plan, Teo reached out and swiped the biscuit off her tray of food. She glared at him.
“Sorry. Hungry,” he said while chewing on the biscuit.
“I was going to eat that.”
Ryuu frowned. “You never eat anything.”
“If we’re going to fight Bautix, I’ll need all the energy I can get,” she said. “Bautix has made me into an enemy of the Steels. And me avoiding capture? Well, that makes me his biggest threat. Without all the people he’s blamed for his crimes in prison or dead, people will be free to point the finger at him.”
She beckoned them closer to hear the rest of her plan.
Later that afternoon, an hour after Aina had finished brewing a new, faster-working paralyzing poison with supplies purchased by Ryuu, they all gathered in his library.
Upon entering the room, the tapered cedar wood ceiling rising above her, Aina’s eyes immediately trailed toward the shadowed area behind the bookshelves where she’d first attempted to kill Kouta.
She glanced at Ryuu, who stood at the edge of the table in the sunken center of the library. There were bags under his eyes that hadn’t been there before Kouta’s death.
Her heart sank when she took him in. Whatever connection had been between them before was gone now, after her betrayal. He’d never send a shy smile her way or brush his hand against hers again.
He nodded at her as she approached, then turned back to the drawing he’d made of the Tower’s basic layout, with the subway blueprints underneath it.
Once Ryuu finished going over the plan again, Teo said, “So, Aina and I are going through the prisons again.”
Teo kept his face expressionless, just tapped his fingers along the table. His other hand moved toward the stitches on his forehead, the skin around it still bruised.
“If we do this plan right,” Aina told him in a reassuring tone, “we’ll cause enough trouble that they’ll barely catch a glimpse of us.”
Raurie reached over then, to point at a spot on the blueprints where Ryuu had drawn the prison’s corridors juxtaposing the subway tunnels. “So, you’ll go through the same vent … but you should start at a higher floor. You need to be as high up as you can get. Why not start at the seventh floor? The seventh, eighth, and ninth floors are where the Inosen are held, after all.”
“That’s a good idea,” Ryuu said. “While you two go through the prison, I’ll assist in presenting the black diamond to the princess at midnight exactly. Raurie will keep an eye out for Bautix while pretending to be my date.”
“I’m glad we’re all on the same side this time,” Raurie said, grimacing at Aina and Teo. “We can’t expect to fight people like Bautix if we’re fighting or lying to each other. Now maybe we can make an actual difference.”
Teo nodded once. “It’s a good plan. If we stop Bautix from hurting even one more innocent person, then it’s worth the chance of getting caught.”
And it’s worth the fear of going back into those dark tunnels. She smothered the thought for now. She’d deal with that fear when the time came.
When Teo and Raurie left to prepare their supplies, Aina stood alone with Ryuu in the library.
A tense silence hung in the air that made it harder for her to speak, broken only by the rain lashing against the window. He rolled up the drawing and the blueprints, taking a bit longer than was necessary.
“How are you doing?” she finally blurted out.
He turned to face her with an odd expression, which made her wish she hadn’t asked at all.
What kind of question was that? she berated herself. His brother just died. Of course he’s not in a good mood.
Instead of answering her question, he said, “All these years, I’ve been saying I’m not afraid anymore, but I still am. I say that I know how to defend myself and that I’ll be safe, but that’s not actually doing anything about the terrible things going on here. That’s hiding, and letting it all happen because it’s too frightening to try to stop it. But now I want to end the things that scare me.”
His words sent a chill through her as more memories from the other night returned to her. She remembered why she’d gone to Kohl’s in the first place, and her shock when he’d told her the truth about her parents’ deaths. She could never forgive him, so there was no point in seeking an apology. There was no way he could bring her parents back to life. The only thing she could do was seek revenge. Try to hurt him like he’d hurt her.
I want to end the things that scare me, Ryuu’s words repeated in her thoughts.
“We will,” she promised him in a whisper, then raised her voice to add, “I can’t bring your brother back to life. I can’t make up for how I lied to you. But I promise you, I’m going to stop Kohl.”
“Don’t do it for me,” Ryuu said, his eyes softening a little. “Whatever happens, I hope you do something you’re proud of. Something you want to do instead of whatever your old boss would want. If killing him is the answer, do it for you, not me. Killing him won’t bring my brother back, after all. But after this is over, we probably shouldn’t see each other anymore. I don’t forgive you for what you did, but I understand why you did it, and that makes it hard for me to hate you. Even if a part of me really wants to.”
She almost asked, Is there a part of you that doesn’t want to hate me, then? But she kept silent as he walked past her. Anything else she said might hurt him more, and she didn’t need to know the answer to that question.
She was no longer just a Blade that Kohl had fashioned her into. She could make something more of herself. Whether Ryuu ever forgave her or not didn’t matter—what mattered was stopping Bautix’s plans and cutting Kohl out of her life for good.
38
Four hours before midnight, Ryuu and Raurie departed for the Tower in a carriage. After packing her supplies for the night in silence, Aina joined Teo in the entrance hall of the mansion.
The sun had set by the time they set out, leaving them in near-darkness. A light rain cascaded onto the grass as they crossed the fields to reach the entrance to the sewers.
It was her first chance to speak with Teo alone since their conversation on her parents’ rooftop. She considered what to say on their way to the sewer entrance. When they finally reached it, their boots crunching in the gravel near the shore of the river, the words came out easily.
“You were right,” she said in a low voice.
“I’m right about a lot of things, so you’ll have to be more specific,” Teo responded with a wink.
She brushed wet strands of hair out of her face, hoping her hand would block the heat rising onto her cheeks. She wondered if this warmth she felt around him had always been there, hiding under her connection to Kohl, or if it was something new. And if it was new, how could she trust it? He was her best friend. She couldn’t ruin that.
“You were right about me,” she said. “I owe myself more. And you were right about Kohl. He really made me believe he cared. Some part of me is still convinced he does. Why didn’t he kill me last night? It would have been so easy.”
“That’s how he works, Aina. He hurts you and then he twists it, so it looks like he’s helping you. Don’t let yourself fall back to him again.” He looked away from her then, his gaze trailing across the river. “You deserve better than that.”
“I know,” she said, swallowing hard. “He told me he’s the one who killed my parents. He said he saved me six years ago because he felt guilty, but really I think he just wanted to own me.”
After a long pause where Teo took in what she said, he placed a hand on her shoulder, and she relaxed under his touch. “All you need is to be brave, like you always are, with everything. Kohl taught you how to kill, but you taught yourself how to live. Don’t forget you survived on your own for years, even if it was hard. Now you have to prove to yourself that you can cut him off too.”
“I will,” she said, her voice growing stronger.
After lighting her flare, Aina waited for Teo to lift the handle in the gravel and descend the ladder. She followed him to the sewers below, and once they were there, they kept their voices and footsteps as quiet as possible. Aina found the entrance to the Inosen’s secret passages she, Raurie, and Ryuu had used last time and led the way. Every few hundred feet, they left flares propped against the walls to mark their path.
Soon, they approached the wide cavern where construction happened during the day. It was eerily quiet now, the drill and tracks just visible by one orange light set along the wall. Aina and Teo snuck along the opposite platform and reached the same door Raurie had found when they came to break out Teo. It opened easily, but when Aina looked through it, she shut it quickly and stepped back onto the platform.
“They’ve posted guards there now,” she whispered. “Probably to watch out for intruders since we broke in last ti
me. I bet there’s more security all over the prison now. We have to save our darts for the guards actually inside the prison, so let’s take out these two the regular way.”
Teo shook his head, then withdrew his gun. “Well, we don’t have time to find another route. We’ve only got about three hours before Bautix strikes.”
She nodded, then slipped into the corridor, keeping her footsteps and breaths quiet. One of the guards was pacing away from her about twenty feet down the hall and under the ventilation shaft they needed to reach. The second guard had gone down a perpendicular hall, but straining her ears, she heard his footsteps nearing the corner again. Any second now, he would turn down this hall and see them.
Beckoning to Teo, she led the way to a spot halfway down the hall where a fuel tank sat in an alcove surrounded by a metal fence. Hiding on the side of the fence covered by shadows, they held their breath and waited for the guards to reach them.
When the shadow of one guard reached their view, Aina jumped out and tackled him to the floor. At the same time, Teo leapt from cover and shot at the approaching guard, the bullet hitting his arm and making him drop his weapon.
Aina slammed her fist into the face of the guard below her. He tried to throw her off, but she forced him around, pressed his face into the cold floor, and placed her arm around his throat. A few moments passed as she increased the pressure. He stopped struggling and passed out.
Teo had knocked out the guard he’d shot, as well. Not wasting another moment, Aina gestured for him to follow her, and they left the guards behind. They walked down the hall and slowed under the ventilation shaft she, Ryuu, and Raurie had entered before. A new grate was in place with a heavier lock attached.
“Give me—”
Teo was already passing her the explosives and a match before she finished the sentence. He squeezed her other hand as he did so. “I can do it if you want.”
“No, I’ve got this,” she said with a small shake of her head, hoping she sounded braver than she felt.
Diamond City Page 25