Shadow City

by Francesca Flores

  A sharp silence fell after her words, and Aina felt like every eye in the room was on her, even though most people had retreated to their own small groups and hushed conversations. Shame curled through her, and she hated herself for damaging Tannis’s trust in her—they were supposed to be partners; they were supposed to understand each other and be equals in running the Dom … but Aina had broken that. She forced herself to meet Tannis’s eyes before speaking.

  “We are,” Aina finally said. “The reason I didn’t tell you isn’t because I think I’m the only boss. It’s just that … I wanted to face him on my own. I still do. I’m sorry, Tannis.”

  Tannis’s eyes softened. “You can do that, but remember I’m on your side. And tell me when things are happening.”

  “I will, I promise,” Aina said with a grimace. “First, we need to find out Bautix’s next steps; if he has another shipment of weapons coming, or if he’ll attack with what he has now.” She could look for Kohl, see what he’d learned … but she still couldn’t make sense of why she’d saved him earlier, and didn’t want to see him again until she did. “I’ll find some Jackals to get information out of.”

  Tannis nodded. “You do that. I’ll ask if Mirran has heard anything, and I’ll send the recruits to the tradehouses to get information from them.”

  Then, Aina looked toward Teo and Ryuu, her throat going dry. Before she did anything else, she needed to apologize to them. Ryuu turned in her direction as she approached, but Teo’s gaze was fixed somewhere in the distance. There was the same tension in his shoulders that was always there after he saw her with Kohl, even when she’d still worked with him, and the same hardness to his eyes that came so much more often after his mother’s death.

  Ryuu took a deep breath, and when he let it out, his hair fluttered away from his face. “I could tell something was off, Aina, when you separated from us on the train. But I had no idea what it was.” Then he spoke directly to Teo when he added, “I don’t think we would have gotten the lead on this shipment at all without Aina doing this, even though we failed to stop it. And she got those notes about the secret entrances into the Tower because of her work with Pavel. It was probably safest for her to keep quiet about it. Even though she lied to us. Many times.”

  Aina winced, but then Ryuu smirked to show he was joking. When Teo spoke, Aina’s eyes flicked to him, and she held her breath, hoping he didn’t hate her now.

  “I don’t like that you kept it from us,” Teo said slowly, staring at the ground as he spoke. “It’s already hard enough to trust anyone in this city, Aina. We should be able to trust one another.”

  “We can’t fight among ourselves, though,” Ryuu said. “We need to stand together if we want to stand a chance against Bautix. None of us would be alive right now if we weren’t all looking out for each other.” Then he chuckled. “Least of all you, Aina. You’re in a shoot-out almost every day.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s other people who are starting the shoot-outs, and they happen to catch me in the middle of them, okay? I’m peaceful by nature.”

  He let out a snort of laughter. “Okay, sure, I believe you.”

  A moment of silence passed, where she felt a brief spark of relief, before she said, “You could take your own advice too. Stop putting the world on your shoulders when the world isn’t even asking you to.”

  “It feels like it is, though. It’ll keep feeling like that until this is all over.” Ryuu shifted uncomfortably, frowning. “I know it couldn’t have been easy to side with him, but we all do what we think we have to do to stay safe; we keep secrets, we put on a strong face so our weaknesses can’t be used against us. I know you made the choice that seemed best at the time. But if you’re not careful, it’ll be very easy for him to hurt you again.”

  “The partnership will only last as long as it takes us to kill Bautix,” Aina said, hoping Teo would meet her eyes, but he didn’t. “I won’t work with Kohl anymore after that. Once we kill Bautix, we’ll both want the tradehouses—we’ll be enemies again. But until then, we’ll keep this partnership alive. It’s been getting us further than anything else.”

  Shaking his head, Teo stood and walked past them and into the tunnel that led out of the safe house. She let him go for a minute, doubt freezing her in place—part of her knew he was right to be mad at her and that if any forgiveness was to come, it should be in his own time.

  But as he’d walked by and she’d caught his eucalyptus scent on the air, saw the way his shoulders tensed when he passed her, she feared this might be the last time she’d ever see him. Jolting out of her indecision, she ran after him into the tunnel, her footsteps echoing off the rock walls.

  He stared straight ahead as she slowed to walk next to him. “You could have told me, Aina,” Teo murmured, making Aina’s heart sink—her reasons for not telling anyone all seemed to fall away, weak and meaningless, as he continued, “What do you think would have been so bad about telling me, or any of us? Manipulating you—or anyone around him—is that man’s favorite hobby. I know you want to prove that he can’t do that anymore and that he doesn’t affect you. But it doesn’t work like that. Your anger at him, your frustration with yourself, seems to be the only thing guiding you now, and it’s going to hurt you.”

  He started to move past her, but she stepped in front of him. He almost walked into her, and stopped just short, staring down at her with those deep brown eyes she’d gotten to know so well. Those eyes that she trusted more than any others. Those eyes that seemed like they’d never trust her again.

  “You’re one to talk,” she said, her voice unsteady. By the way his hands curled into fists at his side, she could tell her words stung. “Your anger drives you as much as it does me. And if it leads me to work with him, I can handle it, Teo. He doesn’t hurt me like he did before. I won’t let him.”

  “I want to believe you, but I don’t trust him, Aina.” He reached for her hand and pulled her a little closer, making her pulse race as her hand came to rest on his chest. “Not him, not the Diamond Guards who killed my mother, not the Sentinel who would let it happen again. All they do is take advantage of us, and I don’t want to lose you to them too. I thought we were standing up to them together, not working with our enemies behind each other’s backs. You’re my best friend, Aina, and you’re still the person I love. I want to trust you. I want you. But you don’t see me that way.”

  Her thoughts scattered as he finished speaking, his breath still warm on her face—he’d pulled her to within a few inches of him, so if she leaned forward even a little, her chin would touch his shoulder. He wanted her. He loved her, words he’d never said before but that she knew were as real as the breath in her lungs, as true as the solid rock of the ground beneath their feet. She gripped the fabric of his shirt in her hand, turning his words over in her head.

  “Who said I don’t see you that way?” she whispered, meeting his eyes—but they were unrelenting. When he next spoke, he enunciated each word in a way that cut.

  “Because you still love Kohl.”

  “I don’t love him. I’m going to kill him,” she said, shoving away to break their closeness. Her voice was low and harsh but somehow sounded like a child telling their parents they were all grown up and could handle anything without knowing what waited for them.

  “Why?” Teo asked, his voice hard and challenging.

  A thousand reasons came to her mind and fell away a breath later. He’d killed her parents. He’d lied to her and manipulated her and made her feel like she owed him her life for years, getting her to do anything he wanted to prove she deserved to live.

  But Bautix had been the one who’d hired Kohl to kill her parents. And Kohl had manipulated her, but she’d been weak and naive enough to fall for it all. Her hands curled into fists, nails pressing into her skin.

  “The Dom was the first home both of us really had after our parents’ deaths,” she said, her voice much less steady than she’d hoped for. “We both want the tradehouses more
than anything else. If he tries to fight me for them, which I know he will once Bautix is dead, then I’ll kill him.”

  “But what if he doesn’t?” Teo replied immediately. “What if he’d rather you work under him instead?”

  “I’ll never go back to that.” The words came automatically, so sure in her mind she didn’t even have to think about them. She straightened, pulling her shoulders back and hoping her certainty was clear in her eyes.

  “From here, it looks like you already have,” Teo said softly. “It feels the same as it did then.”

  “Like what?” she asked, her voice as frail as smoke in the wind.

  “Like every time you talk to him, you fade away a little more. Whenever it happens, you’re still the girl I’ve known for years, but transparent somehow, like you’re becoming a shadow of him rather than staying yourself.”

  Teo walked away then, leaving her cold and alone in the tunnel.

  22

  After struggling for hours to fall asleep on a cot in the safe house, Aina slept for longer than she had in weeks. She woke abruptly the next afternoon; something hard under her pillow had begun pressing into her cheek. Reaching under it, she pulled out her mother’s small porcelain horse statue, which she’d left there the night before trying to stop the shipment and had forgotten about until now.

  Her conversation with Teo last night came crashing back into her thoughts, how he’d challenged her and accused her of loving Kohl. She would prove she didn’t, and that she was ready to fight him when the time came; she had to get rid of anything sentimental about him. Without another thought, she knocked her mother’s porcelain horse off the side of the bed. It shattered at her feet, the little pieces skidding over the rock floor, some hitting into the other mattresses around her. Her shoulders tensed and she gripped the side of the bed. Her employees from the Dom and the Inosen glanced over at her, but she ignored their stares and knelt on the floor amid the shattered porcelain.

  Folded-up pieces of paper lay next to pieces of the broken horse. Her pulse raced as she reached for them. The cracks that had been on the horse’s surface, clearly glued back together—had Kohl broken the horse on purpose, multiple times, to put a new note inside each time?

  Her hands trembled as she opened them, laying them all out on the rocky floor and arranging them according to the dates in each corner. Kohl had signed each one and written her name next to the date on most of them. She let out a long breath, wondering if it would be better to burn them all now without ever reading them. But when he’d returned the statue to her last month, had he meant for her to find these notes? She needed to know what they said, and she could do so without letting him get to her. One hand reached toward the earliest one, and she began reading.

  Each word was a shard of ice through her heart.

  I let you escape. I could have chased you. You were right on the roof. But I couldn’t bring myself to kill you, not when you look so much like Clara. Not when you were so terrified. Your parents are dead, and that’s what he wanted. Surely he won’t care if I allow one child to live. Someone has to be the future of this doomed country, don’t they? I hope you enjoy your freedom, girl, even though it came with a price.

  Clara. It always came back to her, the first person Kohl had killed. He regretted killing her, and so he’d frozen when the time came to kill Aina. He wrote this letter like it had been a conscious choice he’d made, but Aina closed her eyes now and pictured it. Like Lill freezing up on the train in front of her mother, Kohl had gone numb when he saw Aina’s face—his legs rooted to the ground as she fled her parents’ murder scene.

  The second note stared up at her, marked with a date roughly two years later.

  The first time I saw you after that night, it was like seeing a ghost. You nearly looked like one anyway. Your face was gray like a corpse, a bag of glue stuck to your nose and mouth where you lay facedown on the street. I didn’t have to pull it away from you, but I did. I paid one of my informants to track you down, give you a clean job, and find out your name for me. You’re a survivor. I hope you take that job, and I hope I’ll learn your name.

  She had taken that job. She remembered waking up the next morning, angry that someone had stolen her bag of glue in the middle of the night. But then a man approached her saying he would pay her to deliver packages of laundered money from the shops in the Center to his boss, with no strings attached. She’d been young enough not to be suspicious of that.

  The next note, a year later.

  Aina, you keep throwing your own life in the gutter. Why don’t you have that job anymore? I wish I could send you this letter, but I know you don’t have an address. You have a pair of shoes now, though. You’re welcome.

  Another year later, when she was twelve—the night he saved her from the bombing. She let out a long, shuddering breath as she read the two short sentences over and over.

  You’re better off in the Dom than dead in the wreckage of some bombing that has nothing to do with you. If anyone’s going to kill you, it’ll be me.

  There were only four left, but she didn’t know if she could get through them. Shaking her head, she unfolded the next one and read slowly.

  This morning you asked me if you could open your own tradehouse. You know I’d do anything to get you to stop trying to overdose. Or maybe you don’t know that, Aina. I hope you know now. Once you’re ready, I’ll give you everything you want.

  That one hit hard. She bit down on her bottom lip. He’d been determined to give her the tradehouse she wanted, but as soon as her mistakes threatened his reputation, he threw her out. He’d punched her in the face, taken all her money, and left her at the Jackals’ mercy. He only cared about her as long as she proved herself worthy of that care.

  You killed your first man today, the next note read.

  You’re shaking less than I did when I killed Clara. Maybe because you didn’t know the man personally. Sometimes I wonder if I let you live because I wanted to or because I’m too weak to end you. I hope we won’t have to find out. I like this limbo between us, of neither of us knowing what the other truly wants.

  The next note, written last year when she was seventeen, made a blush rise on her cheeks that both confused and angered her.

  I saw you with your friend in a tavern. You were too drunk to notice I was in the same room. But he moved your hair out of your face, and he looked like he wanted to kiss you, but he stopped himself. That fool is hopelessly in love with you. I wanted to kill him right then, Aina. He doesn’t know you like I do.

  The last note was written only about two months ago, after she’d failed to kill Kouta Hirai.

  I hate to see you go, Aina. But I had to make a choice between the empire I’ve built for myself, the protection it affords, the way it empowers this community—and the one girl who makes me weak in a city where you can only afford to be strong.

  She reread the notes again, knowing she should be angry at Kohl—but instead, relief washed over her. She hadn’t imagined what he felt for her—she hadn’t just been crazy and hopeless and pathetic the past six years. It was like a weight lifted off her; she might never forgive him for all he’d done, but a small spark of hope lit in her—maybe one day she could forgive herself.

  These notes were proof that he might be as weak as her, and that she was more than a match for him. And perhaps she could use them against him.

  She tucked the notes into the pouch with her poison darts and left the safe house. The air was hot and dry outside, and there was no sign of puddles on the ground; the afternoon rain must not have come yet.

  Last night, she’d told Tannis she would get information from the Jackals about Bautix’s next steps—and to find out if he had any more weapons shipments coming. It would be easy enough to find some Jackals in the Stacks and beat the truth out of them, but most of the ones Bautix had put in the south were grunts who knew nothing. She needed Jackals who were high up and closer to Bautix, like Lill’s mother, Kerys.

  As she br
eathed in the smoke-tinged air, her eyes trailed over the muddy hills leading out of the Stacks. It was far from here, but the tallest buildings of Lyra Avenue were still visible at the crest of the hill. The answer came easily to her then: she’d go to the Jackals’ hideout in Fayes’s apartment and hope they were there now.

  A half hour later, she reached the side of the building and began climbing. She soon reached the third floor and the window she’d found last time. With her hands clinging to the windowsill and the tips of her shoes digging into the narrow holds between bricks, she peered inside.

  Three Jackals played a game of cards and drank together. Another sat off to the side, her legs crossed and one foot tapping the floor restlessly. Kerys.

  A moment later, Kerys barked at the other Jackals to hurry up, then jerked her head to the hallway leading to the other rooms. With reluctant looks, the other Jackals picked up their drinks and headed to a room halfway down the hall, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  Hardly breathing to avoid making any noise, Aina lifted herself over the windowsill and into the room. On the balls of her feet, she moved to the corner and crouched down next to a chest of drawers, willing her pulse to slow so she could hear.

  “He’ll need poison for all three of them,” came a Jackal’s voice. “Will he even have it ready in time?”

  “Don’t doubt Alsane,” came Kerys’s voice. “He’ll sneak into the Tower himself and pretend to have negotiations with the Sentinel, but he’ll poison them. It would have been easier with Fayes still alive and his connections in place, but Alsane will manage. He has a plan for his men to sneak into the Tower while his meeting with the Sentinel is underway.”

  “I hope so. To do the job without Fayes, Bautix needs a good plan.”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Kerys snapped, her voice leaving no room for argument. “You don’t need all the details. Now, tell me. How many men will you have at the ports? They need to be ready to receive the smuggler in three days.”