“Easily,” he said with a nod. “I’ll get them by tomorrow, and I’ll see if I can get more diamonds for us to use so Raurie and Lill don’t have to risk getting caught.”
Lill looked like she wanted to protest, but Raurie nudged her with her elbow and said, “Thank you, Ryuu.” Lill grimaced and mouthed thanks as Raurie reached for one of the diamonds.
She held it up, twirling it to catch the golden light so a rainbow fell across the brown skin of her cheeks and along the training mat below them. An eerie hush took over the room, and Aina could swear she stopped breathing. She thought of Kohl earlier today, his smug face as he taunted her; the Jackals wreaking havoc in the Stacks; Bautix’s note threatening the Dom she and Tannis had fought for when they’d both had nothing else.
“Where do we start?” she whispered, her anticipation rising.
“Learn to draw blood from someone to weaken them,” Raurie said. “And how to stop it, in case someone on our side is injured and we need to heal them.”
Aina withdrew a knife from the brace across her chest, then held it out to Raurie. As Raurie took it, Aina recalled the night Kohl had first handed her a knife and told her he’d make her into something more than a girl from nothing
With this magic at their fingertips, they would all prove what people from nothing could really do.
“How much blood will it make them lose?” Aina asked, leaning forward slightly, her eyes fixed on the diamond. “How does it make them bleed?”
“When casting the spell, swipe the diamond through the air in the direction you want to make a cut,” Lill said. “Your intention will help you guide the direction of the cut too. It will make them bleed both internally and externally, and they might also bleed from their eyes, nose, and mouth. How much they bleed depends on how much you want to hurt them, and you can control that too. Sometimes, if the spell is strong, their veins and arteries can burst and kill them. Verrain did that to some people,” she added, biting her lower lip. “But our enemies won’t shy away from violence, so neither should we.”
After bringing the knife to her arm, making a small cut and holding a rough diamond to it, Raurie said in a steady voice, “Nagan inoke.”
A moment later, the diamond glowed with an internal, soft golden light. Raurie held it level with Lill’s face. The light shining through it cast a rainbow pattern on the floor, on Raurie’s hand, and her bloodstained knife.
A moment later, Lill’s nose began to bleed. A trickle of red fell from her lips. She paled visibly, drawing in a deep breath, and one hand darted to an inside pocket of her jacket to pull out a small cloth.
Aina nodded approvingly. “I like that one.”
“Of course you do,” Teo snorted, but then met her eye over the candlelight and grinned.
Raurie held a hand to her own head, as if she felt dizzy, but a moment later she shook it off. “See? Like Gevann said, it weakens you a little too. But you won’t be bleeding, so as long as you can keep focused, it should be fine.”
“Did you find this one in the Nos Inoken?” Ryuu asked.
Raurie nodded, then pulled a small copy of the holy book out of her jacket pocket, as tattered as the one Aina’s parents had used. “Lill helped, since we both know a good amount of the holy language. But it’s similar to Marinian, which I picked up as a child when my parents were still alive, so I don’t have many problems reading it.” Then she scowled slightly. “That’s one reason they stamped out the holy language, fined anyone who spoke it; more people would probably learn this type of blood magic if they could read the Nos Inoken.”
“We found as many as we could last night, and practiced a bit when we could hide it from the other Inosen,” Lill said. “But just learning the words isn’t enough to be able to cast the spells.”
“Is it harder somehow?” Tannis asked, frowning.
“You have to intend it,” Lill said. “It’s simple to summon healing spells because we naturally don’t like to see people suffer. If our house is crumbling, it’s easy to have the intention of seeing it fixed by magic because you want your house to be stable and whole. You barely even have to think about it. But it’s much harder to intend to make someone bleed. You have to be honest with it. It can’t be that you want to practice magic, because that’s not the real intention. You have to actually want to hurt the person.”
“How do you do it, then?” Teo asked.
“I have to…” Raurie sighed and looked over at Lill. “I have to think of something I don’t like about Lill. She swipes my food off my plate when I’m not looking sometimes. It’s a joke, and I usually catch her and she gives back the food, but I have to turn it into anger. I have to think how we can’t waste our food, and it’s selfish of her to do that, and that she’s making me go hungry. I have to take something true and compound how hurtful it is in my mind, even if it’s not really that bad. I can usually make the thoughts go away after practicing these spells, but I hope we don’t end up actually hating each other along the way.”
“Don’t worry,” Lill said, her voice slightly nasally with the handkerchief still held to her nose. “I’ll still swipe your food, Raurie, no hard feelings from me.”
Raurie laughed, but a hint of worry still glimmered in her eyes as she spun the used diamond between her fingers.
“This is a small taste of what the magic can do,” Lill said, her eyes bright as she drew the cloth away from her face. Some of the rosiness had come back to her cheeks and blended with the red violet of her hair. “It’s power over life and death.”
“So, you’ve been able to hide it well?” Tannis asked, a frown pulling at her lips. “I know your aunt wouldn’t approve.”
“We have,” Raurie answered, brushing her hair back from her face as she looked at Tannis. “If June knew, she would never let me leave the safe house. Or she’d kick me out. One of the two.” After a pause, she said, “Ryuu and Aina, you two should try now.”
She and Ryuu faced each other, each holding a knife and a diamond. Before they started, Aina opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but she couldn’t figure out the words. They had to pretend to be mad at each other to practice this spell … so what would Ryuu think of for her?
Ryuu concentrated on Aina’s face for a moment before bringing the knife to his upper arm. When his blood touched the diamond, he held it up in front of her face like Raurie had done to Lill and said in a shaky voice, “Nagan inoke.”
A wet sensation touched her chin and a coppery taste filled her mouth. A drop of blood fell on her hand where it rested on her thigh, bright and starkly red. Teo handed her a cloth to wipe her face with, and she did, hoping the cloth hid the trembling in her hands.
“Ryuu…” she said slowly, her heart twisting in her chest. He’d placed the knife and the diamond down with a tight grimace, and met her eyes with something like a plea in them. She didn’t even need to ask what he’d thought of; Kohl had sent her to kill his brother. She’d failed, and it was before she even knew Ryuu, but the fact would always remain that she’d tried to. As close as they’d grown over the past couple of months, he could still dredge up that memory if he wanted to.
“My turn,” she said eventually, her voice slightly high-pitched. Then, before even lifting the blade to her arm, she said in a rush, “There’s nothing I don’t like about you, Ryuu. None of this is personal.”
He nodded slowly, and the plea in his eyes faded a little as she drew her own blood. Perhaps the way to think of it would be how she considered her jobs as an assassin. Find purpose and act without hesitation. She would focus on Ryuu’s status as a Steel; she could hate Steels, even if he was different from all the rest. His glimmering gold watch and silk tie certainly helped strengthen that image.
Taking a shallow breath, she focused with one purpose—to hurt someone—before saying, “Nagan inoke.”
Her skin prickled, her cheeks warming with the blood rushing through her veins. A small gust of wind swept past her and she breathed in sharply at the sensation. H
er hand was about level with Ryuu’s shoulder—she drew a short line downward, blood dripping down her hand as she did.
A narrow cut formed on Ryuu’s shoulder, and blood welled at it. A tingling, slightly piercing sensation came to her own shoulder, but nothing too bad—as she watched, though, the cut on Ryuu’s shoulder opened wider. He paled, one hand going to the wound, and dark red blood coated his hand in seconds. Before anything worse could happen, Lill acted—she drew a diamond and her own knife in a flash, blood appearing on her arm faster than Aina could blink, and said, “Amman inoke” in a forceful tone.
The blood stopped flowing, but Ryuu swayed. Aina reached out to steady him, feeling nausea and dizziness rise through her too. She gulped, forcing it down. As she and Ryuu both sat back, her hands shook. She’d hurt plenty of people before … but never a friend.
“What happened?” Ryuu asked as he drew in a few deep gulps of air.
“I don’t know,” Raurie said slowly, brow furrowed as she looked at Aina. “Nothing like that happened when we practiced earlier.”
“Ryuu, I’m sorry,” she said, her own dizziness passing enough to speak. He finally looked up at her then, and a spark of uncertainty lit his eyes. She bit her lip, hating that she’d put it there. “I didn’t think of anything that strong. I thought it wouldn’t even work.”
“Well, think of it this way,” Teo said slowly, his head tilted to the side. “As an assassin, you’re taught to shove feelings aside when killing someone; makes the job easier when you see yourself as a weapon, not a person. There’s no time for wavering, you just act. Maybe the magic is like a knife in your hands, no matter who you’re using it against. You’re a better killer than any of the Inosen without magic, so with magic, you’re even more effective.”
“Different from those of us who don’t go around stabbing people for a living, I suppose,” Lill said with an attempt at a lighthearted voice. “It will be useful against the Jackals.”
Aina twirled the knife in her hands, her pulse racing. If she could control this magic, she’d use it against Bautix, Kohl, and anyone who threatened them.… She’d be deadlier than any Blade that Kohl had ever imagined. The aftereffects weren’t fun, but she could get used to it, like she’d gotten used to being an assassin.
“We can look for more spells,” Raurie said. “Harder ones, but maybe you’ll find them easy if they’re violent. I know it can’t feel good when you do that to a friend, but against an enemy, it will be good for you to know them.”
“We should get back now,” Lill said. “They didn’t expect us to be gone this long. We’ll come up with some excuse on the way.”
A dull clang of metal on stone resounded from the hall, breaking Lill’s last word. Aina’s ears perked, one hand going to the handle of her scythe.
It could have been a recruit dropping something, perhaps a weapon in the armory. It could have been anything.
But she and Tannis stood, each of them gripping weapons. Everyone fell silent.
“What the hell was that?” Aina whispered, turning toward the open door of the training room. She pictured the Jackals she’d attacked last night, the one she let get away. All the ones who stalked the streets of the south, getting closer and closer to the Dom by the day.
A crackling sounded, and then a gust of air like what she’d felt when using the blood magic.
She ran toward the door with Tannis and skidded into the hall, covering her face as bright flames rose up in front of her.
12
Aina pivoted, slamming her back against the opposite wall as flames tracked up the one in front of her. Teo and Tannis stood with her in the doorway, covering their faces from the heat, with Raurie, Ryuu, and Lill behind them, the flickering orange light reflected in their wide eyes.
Squinting against the sear of the heat, Aina searched for the source of the fire. A metal cannister lay halfway down the hall, and tracks of oil soaked the floor. She drew in a slow breath without caring about the smoke she inhaled, suddenly finding it hard to move from this spot even with shouts around her and the roar of the flames.
At the end of the hall, a window creaked—a figure clad in dark clothing, only the tips of blue hair sticking out from under his hat, caught her eye for a moment, then leapt out of the window.
“Get out of here!” she shouted back at the others, inhaling another mouthful of smoke as she did. “Go through the window in the training room. Tannis, get the recruits out.”
Aina ran down the hall toward the window, skirting against the side of the wall that wasn’t burning—yet. Sweat ran down her back, and as she moved toward the window, sparks snagged at her clothes. She tried to shake them off, but the heat only grew more intense, like she was being burned alive and hadn’t realized it yet. The glass on the window ahead began to melt before her eyes.
Looking over her shoulder, she saw nothing but flames and the dark shapes their shadows cast. There was no going back that way. The Dom was being destroyed, and the people who’d done it were getting away.
Taking one short step back, she was tempted to close her eyes, but that wouldn’t save her from the fire. She ran to the window and jumped, pressing off the sill with her boots.
Curling into a ball, she landed on dark, wet grass and rolled to the side, dousing the flames that caught on her clothes. Some of her skin still burned, and she hissed through the pain, but there wasn’t much she could do about it now. She stood in the dark night outside the burning Dom.
It would have been pitch-black were it not for the fire and the slashes of the red and silver crescent moons in the sky. Three people sprinted away from the Dom, toward the street where they could disappear in the alleys of the Stacks.
Fury burning through her like the fire above, she raced after them across the grass. A window on the second floor shattered and glass rained down with sparks of flame. A shard of glass pierced her shoulder, but she ignored it and ran faster, raising a scythe with one hand as she closed in on them.
One of them turned then, and her scythe reflected in his wide eyes as she jumped toward him. He cried out, but his voice cut off when she slashed him from shoulder to hip.
She wrenched her scythe out of his skin and pushed him off with the edge of the blade. A gunshot fired next to her, hitting one of the others squarely in the back. With a quick glance over her shoulder, Aina spotted Teo running from the side of the house, his gun still raised. The man he’d shot fell to the ground, his blood spreading across the dirt road under the light of the flames.
Aina turned toward the last person just as they swung their own blade toward her face. Darting backward, Aina lifted her scythe again and faced the woman—the Jackal from the apartment she and Kohl had spied on earlier today, the one who’d almost caught Aina outside the window.
Plumes of smoke filtered into the sky as they faced each other, and the panicked shouts of bystanders who’d come outside of their homes across the street clashed with the roar of flames behind her. The Jackal swung toward Aina’s side with her dagger, and Aina caught it with her scythe, pushing against her as the heat of the fire made sweat pour down her face and into her eyes. With a grunt, she forced the Jackal’s dagger away, then swung toward the Jackal’s unprotected side.
As the Jackal darted away, the blade missed her side but cut her thigh. She hissed in pain as blood poured down the side of her leg.
The Jackal snarled and shoved Aina back toward the fire, her knife slashing out; Aina barely dodged it in time and the blade seared across her arm. Pivoting, she grabbed the Jackal’s arm and twisted it around her back, then shoved her down and pinned her to the ground in front of the Dom.
“Tell me where Bautix is hiding, and I’ll make your death quick,” she said, and slammed the Jackal’s chin onto the ground. The Jackal yelled obscenities at her through a bloodied mouth, but her voice was drowned out by a new roar of flames. The heat hit Aina in the face when she looked toward the Dom, drawn to it by a dreadful tug in her chest. All the windows were melted or
shattered into nothing as the flames steadily claimed it all. She had no idea if everyone had gotten out alive—her friends, her employees. Everyone she’d said she would protect. She’d failed them all.
Then she did something she’d never done before with a target so close; her grip slackened, the burning Dom the only thing she could look at now.
“Aina!” called Teo’s voice from somewhere nearby; it was impossible to see far in front of her with the building smoke. “It’s going to fall!”
The flames had cut through the bark on one of the trees in front of the Dom and it broke in half, the rest of its trunk and heavy branches falling to the grass, shrouded in fire and smoke. The one closest to Aina began to fall too, an awful creaking sound coming from the bark.
The Jackal lifted her torso and slammed her head against Aina’s chin, then wrenched free and scrambled to her feet.
Blood in her mouth, Aina rose and chased her. But the Jackal pulled out a gun and shot at Aina’s feet, making her step back as a wall of heat reached her from behind. Aina threw her scythe with as much force as she could muster. The firelight caught its blade as it cut through the air and into the Jackal’s neck.
Aina rolled to the side at the last second as the burning tree fell toward her.
Then Raurie appeared outlined by the flames, coming from the direction of the Dom and raising a knife to her own arm quickly. She shouted two words that sounded like the holy language, but Aina could hardly hear over the loud flames and the nearby shouts for help. A moment later, the ground under Aina shook. A large rock jutted out of the earth, spearing upward toward the falling tree and cracking it in half. The bottom half fell to the ground, and Aina rolled out of the way in time to avoid the top half.
Tannis pulled Raurie out of the way while Aina grabbed the scythe from the Jackal’s body, then got to her feet. As they ran, she looked back, wanting to run into the Dom to save whatever was left, but knowing there was nothing to save.
Shadow City Page 11
