Aina had been seven. She’d curled into a ball under the kitchen table, as if the man her mother was treating wouldn’t be able to see her. As if she were invisible and could melt away from this one-room home where her parents risked their lives and prayed for protection. As if she could hide from the light of the moons pouring through the window from the outside world, where the war had ended but people still killed one another every day.
Her mother had hummed in Milano under her breath as she brushed sweat and blood from the man’s face with a cool washcloth. The man had no eyes and one of his hands had no fingers. Aina didn’t know much about blood magic at the time, but she knew these were injuries her mother and father could never heal.
“I gave them up,” the man said as if in disbelief. “I gave them up.” His voice was scratchy and hoarse, as if the inside of his mouth had been burned.
He repeated the words over and over until Aina’s mother’s coaxing and patient voice finally got him to reveal who, exactly, he’d given up. He’d been taken for questioning by the Diamond Guards, and Inosen fighters had broken him out of prison, but not before he’d lost his eyes and the fingers of one hand during the interrogation. His knees were shattered and he’d only made it to her house because the Inosen had deposited him here, knowing her parents took care of injured people when they could. In the middle of his torture, he’d choked out the location of the Inosen safe house he’d lived in on Lyra Avenue. All the Inosen there were now dead, and if the Inosen fighters hadn’t broken him out that night, he would have followed with his own execution the next morning.
“Kill me,” he’d demanded of her mother.
Her mother had shaken her head, her eyes wide. She began whispering, and if Aina didn’t know the words by heart already, she wouldn’t have caught them at all: it was the Mothers’ scripture from the Nos Inoken that currently sat under a cloth on the table above Aina.
“Aina, vete afuera,” her mother had barked over, but before she could demand it again, the man took all her attention.
Aina didn’t leave. She didn’t blink or even breathe as she watched what happened next.
The man had begged her mother and shouted at her, his voice rising as he yelled out that there were Inosen hiding here and if her mother didn’t want them to be given up too, she’d better kill him quickly. Her mother slapped him and held her hand over his mouth until he bit her. He called her terrible names, but also called her an angel, someone who understood mercy and when it was too late to save someone. It went on for at least an hour until he started threatening Aina, saying that if he survived the night, he wouldn’t rest until he killed her as revenge on her mother. Aina kept her eyes fixed on him as her mother finally placed a pillow over his mouth and nose and pressed down.
When it was done, and when her mother asked a boy outside to get rid of the body, Aina moved from under the table. She placed her hands on the sheets where the man had died and wondered how her family could sleep there peacefully that night.
Her mother washed her hands, her face surprisingly calm, then sat beside Aina on the bed to undo her braids and brush her hair.
She leaned forward and kissed Aina on the cheek, then said, “Don’t tell your father.”
In the present, she shook her head. When her mother had killed that man, she’d set aside magic and used her hands, not wanting to use the Mothers’ power for something deadly.
But Aina would.
As Teo sat down and passed her a cup of tea, she nodded toward a stack of boxes in the corner. He’d moved a month ago, yet most his things were still packed and gathering dust.
“I know I barged in uninvited tonight, but if you’re going to have people over, you should probably decorate,” she murmured. “Looks a bit barren. Any girls you bring over might guess you kill people for a living without you even having to tell them.”
“Says the girl who walks around with a bloodied scarf.” Teo laughed, then his voice softened. “You’re the only girl who’s come here, Aina.”
He tapped his knuckles on the table as his eyes trailed toward the boxes. Her cheeks warmed at his words, but she didn’t know what to say to that, so she looked at the boxes too. A wool blanket peeked out of the corner of one, and she could make out the edge of a landscape stitched onto the fabric in jewel tones and geometric shapes.
“I remember your mother’s paintings,” she said slowly. “She did some of them herself, didn’t she? Like the blankets. All the steppe land, the plains, falcon riders.”
As she spoke, he pulled a necklace from under his shirt. Only the gold chain was visible until he drew out the pendant. It was the same amber necklace his mother had often worn, with an image of Terroq, Linash’s falcon god, etched onto the pendant.
“You know my parents were falcon riders—we call them terrishan aleph. Giant ones that they rode into battle in border wars for decades. They left and came here for me, without knowing how dangerous Sumerand would become. And you know how it is, growing up poor in Kosín after the war. There are only two choices: fear or be feared. Violence that never ends. I’m too far down that path to hope for anything else, but maybe the only way to stand up to the Steels is to be worse than them. I want to believe that will make a difference. But at the same time … that’s what got her killed.”
Leaning across the table, Aina reached for the pendant and brushed a finger over the falcon etching. Its gold eyes seemed to stare at her, as if the thing were alive, but it was the light gilding the curves and angles of the design. In the past few weeks, he’d avoided talking about his mother, and had shut down when she’d tried to comfort him before—he must have had this guilt and doubt running through his mind constantly.
“You know something?” she asked, her voice the only sound in the still night. “Your mother asked me to protect you when she couldn’t. We can protect each other, and if violence is what we’re good at, then we’ll do whatever it takes to stand up to those who took our families and homes from us, and we’ll stop them from doing it to anyone else. They don’t stand a chance, Teo.”
She let the pendant fall back to his chest, but Teo caught her hand in his before she could pull it back.
The night deepened around them. Aina knew she had to return to the Dom to let Tannis know what had happened. But right now, time froze, this moment etching itself into their history. When it was the two of them, nothing could penetrate the way they stared at each other, the heat between them, the way their thoughts seemed to pass to each other without needing to speak a word—the way thoughts did when you knew you were each other’s best friend.
Then Teo lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the top of it. A light kiss, but one that still sent a blush to her cheeks. She kept her eyes averted from his, not trusting how she might react if she met his gaze. For a long moment, her thoughts roiled, a storm on two sides; one that wanted to draw closer to him and feel this connection between them grow, the other that reminded her she couldn’t really love anyone until she got Kohl’s voice out of her head—she’d only end up hurting them.
They stayed exactly like that for a long while after. He didn’t kiss her hand again, and neither of them said a word.
“I have to get back to the Dom,” she finally said, bringing their hands down to the table, where he let go first.
“Good night, Aina,” he said when she stood and finally met his eyes. The light glinted off the copper color just as it had on the falcon pendant, and it was like the sun shone on her, even in the dead of night.
She tried to take a little of that warmth with her when she slipped outside and cast one more glance at the balcony where she’d agreed to work with Kohl.
The moment had broken, time moved again, and she was on her guard once more.
9
Teo’s neighborhood, a few blocks north of the train station in the Center, was a rather quiet one—much different from his old place east of Lyra Avenue, which was almost as rough as the Stacks. Silence surrounded her, punctuated briefly when
ever someone walked past her, but these were peaceful residents of the city.
Still, anger rose in her at the sight of them. How many of them in these richer districts still thought of Bautix as a war hero? In a way, he was smart to start building terror in the south. No one in the rest of the city ever cared what was happening in the Stacks until it affected them too, and by then, it would be too late for them to save themselves.
The lights faded as she moved south, but voices rose. Not the drunken voices that filled Lyra Avenue or the exuberant tones of tourists in Rose Court. These voices were hushed but panicked, low and forceful at the same time. Aina gripped a knife in each hand, knowing that her slight limp would make her look like an easy target.
Her footsteps quieted as she made her way down a hill into the Stacks, veering southeast toward the Dom. A few groups were huddled together on the road. As a child, she’d always avoided making friends, even with other children on the streets, because she never knew who to trust. Most of them had no faith left, not in the Mothers and not in one another.
But now people were grouping together more often, pushing aside their fear of one another to stand up to the Jackals as well as they could. She nodded to them as she passed, and while a few sent her a cautious wave or a nod, most avoided eye contact. As if even looking at her would put a mark on them.
She tried to temper her fury as she walked, but it kept building inside her—her side of the city didn’t deserve to suffer because of Bautix’s fight for power. The Inosen didn’t deserve to suffer for it either. But that was exactly had had happened for years.
On the next road, now in the Dom’s territory, she passed a boy a few years younger than her, sleeping in an alley under a cardboard box. As she left some silver kors next to him, small drops of water tapped on the cardboard. She held out a hand and caught a drop of rain on her palm too. When she stood, she noticed the boy wore no shoes. Her heart tugged with the memory of the pair of shoes she’d woken up to one cold winter morning when her hope had nearly run its course—the pair Kohl had left her.
Then, she clenched a hand into a fist at her side and kept walking down the dirt road that began to darken and turn to mud as the rain came down harder. Kohl had told her that story to unsettle her, like how he’d reminded her that he’d started the tradehouses to give opportunities to the people here.
That was yet another reason no one could know about her partnership with him: the tradehouses wouldn’t trust her at all if they found out.
She could give hope to the people here as much as Kohl had said he wanted to—it started with treating her employees better than he ever had, and stopping Bautix from harming the south anymore.
Turning down the next road, she began to walk past a row of houses and small businesses, then stopped in her tracks. This was the Dom’s territory. Usually, this street was lit with candles to mark which shops were open and which were closed. But now, boarded-up windows covered every building.
A door slammed open. Aina slowed, gripping her knives tightly. A woman yelped as she was dragged out of her home by two Jackals—obvious by the tattoo on their forearms. One of them, a girl a few years older than Aina, shoved the older woman to the ground.
“You’ve had a week,” the Jackal said, her voice so cutting, the older woman winced. “Two thousand kors. Where are they?”
She held out a hand, beckoning with her fingers. The woman looked up at her, gasping for breath as the rain fell on her face and slicked her hair. But after a moment of staring up at the Jackal, her face hardened, mouth flattening to a thin line. She spat in the Jackal’s hand.
The other Jackal, a man, whipped out a knife faster than the older woman could blink, but she didn’t react; she’d made her choice.
Aina stepped forward and whistled. Both Jackals whipped around, hands going to their weapons, but when they saw her, they froze.
“You must both be new,” she said, walking toward them with as casual a gait as she could manage. “Neither of you have asked for permission to even walk on these streets, let alone attack the people here.”
She briefly met the older woman’s eyes and gave her the smallest nod. As Aina slowed to a stop in front of the Jackals, the woman darted past them into her home and slammed the door shut.
“We’re not new,” the male Jackal said scathingly. “We’ve been doing this for weeks.”
Aina raised an eyebrow. If they thought a few weeks was a long time, she didn’t want to know what they thought was short. How many Jackals did Bautix have now? What had he promised them in exchange for shaking kors out of old women in the Stacks?
“How much money did you collect from these people today?” Aina asked. They looked at each other, frowning in confusion. “Go on, go to each door and give it back. Whoever does it fastest will get a quick death. Whoever is slowest…” She shrugged.
“You’re injured,” the girl Jackal said then, eyes lighting up as she nodded at Aina’s bandaged leg. She flipped her knife in one hand and caught it. “The great Aina Solís, Queen of Blades, outnumbered in a dark alley.”
“Queen of Blades?” she asked, bending her knees in a slight crouch. “I like the sound of that.”
“Queen?” The other Jackal laughed, reaching for a gun in a holster at his hip. “More like the Blood King’s bitch.”
Aina flung her dagger straight into the Jackal’s throat. As he dropped, blood spilling onto the dirt, the girl Jackal lunged for his fallen gun.
In two quick steps, Aina reached her and pushed her to the muddy ground. Pinning her down, she tilted the girl’s head all the way back, knife at her throat.
“I’m a generous queen,” she said then as the Jackal’s eyes widened in fear. “Give the money back to the people you took it from tonight, then tell all your friends to never step foot on my territory again, and I won’t slit your throat.”
She stood and kicked the Jackal away from her. The girl scrambled to her feet and ran to the nearest door, sliding kors under it in a clumsy rush.
A slow clapping sounded behind Aina, blending in with the rain that pelted the street. Hair rose on the back of her neck and her hand went to her knife once more. Turning, she schooled her features to show nothing, even though her pulse slowed at the sight of Arman Kraz, the boss of Thunder, gathered with the remaining members of his tradehouse—a girl and a boy around her age, and one younger boy whose nervous fidgeting told her he was still a recruit. By killing his second-in-command and his spy, Aina had cut his ranks down to four total. She grimaced at the sight; the last thing she wanted was to lose tradehouse employees, but when they did their best to spy on her and destabilize her and Tannis’s rule, that was exactly what she would do.
“Good evening, Arman,” she said in a chipper tone, her voice the loudest thing in the Stacks right now. “Happened to be taking a stroll and stumbled upon me?”
A tick went off in his lower jaw. “No, Miss Solís, I came here for you.”
“Interesting,” she said, shifting her weight casually to one side to seem completely unperturbed. “When I want to chat with someone, I usually knock on their door, ask if they’re busy. I don’t corner them on a dark road.”
Arman raised an eyebrow then. “Do we frighten you? I thought you were our fearless leader.” When she didn’t reply immediately, he took several steps toward her, his employees hanging back. “Two of my employees have died in what seems to be a terrible accident. I want to know if I can trust you to watch out for the rest of them, or if you’re too busy running around the city with Steels and Inosen doing Mothers-know-what instead of looking out for the tradehouses. I know your family’s not from here, and you’re too young to even remember what it was like during the war, but we don’t take kindly to those who betray their own.”
Her blood was boiling by the end of his sentence. If he was merely concerned about her keeping secrets and being friends with Ryuu, it would be a fair criticism. But Kohl had done whatever he’d wanted and no one in the tradehouses dared to question
him. This was a challenge, not constructive feedback—and the small quirk at the corner of Arman’s lips proved he was enjoying it.
She took a slight step back, looking up at him through her eyelashes and hunching her shoulders a little so she looked as weak as he thought she was.
“Well, Arman, what I’d say to you about that is—”
She slammed her fist into his face. Bone cracked. He stumbled back a step, blood coating his fingers as his hands went to his broken nose. While he tried to regain his footing, she shoved him to the ground and pinned him down, his face in the mud. His employees watched with open mouths, their hands going to their guns but none of them making a move.
“Are you listening carefully? Hopefully that knocked out some of your ego.” She let out a huff of breath that fluttered the hair on the back of his head. “Every single thing I do is for the safety of the tradehouses. The Blood King is the one who ran to his Steel boss like a dog with its tail between its legs after I fought him, not me. Your attempts to undermine me are preventing me from protecting the tradehouses. Did you hear that? You are hurting your own business by doubting me. If you send a spy after me again, I will cut out your tongue. I hope this serves as a reminder of which tradehouse and which bosses actually hold the power here, and which bosses you should be loyal to. Your job is not to spy on me. Your job is to work for me.”
Shadow City Page 8
