Diamond City

by Francesca Flores

  Just then, the carriage from Spennard Cleaning Company rolled to a stop, hidden behind a copse of trees at the end of the pathway leading to the house. Aina’s eyes widened as she stared at the name of the cleaning company, and for once, she was grateful Kohl had forced her to learn how to read.

  She tapped Teo’s shoulder and pointed. A man and a woman in the cleaning company’s uniforms stepped out of the carriage, carrying buckets of cleaning supplies, and approached the front doors. They waved their identification badges at the servants, who allowed them entry after a brief glance. Aina’s eyes narrowed at the pair’s uniforms as they passed through the wide doors.

  “I have an idea,” she whispered to Teo. “We’ll need fake IDs.”

  Teo nodded in agreement. “Shouldn’t take more than a couple days, you think?”

  “I need to introduce you to more people,” she said with a laugh. Maybe it was the fresh air, or maybe it was the sense of being one step closer to all her goals, but right now she didn’t feel the need to hide her pride. “I’ll get them tomorrow. We’ll each be twenty-five thousand kors richer within a day, and I’ll get my tradehouse.”

  8

  “That looks nothing like me,” Aina said, shaking her head at the forty-something woman with light, short-cropped hair smiling up at her from the black-and-white identification photo. She tossed it back on the table in front of the man selling it to her.

  He merely took the cigar out of his mouth and exhaled, the spiced scent filling the room along with a cloud of smoke. They were in a cramped closet in the the back of one of the tradehouses near the warehouse district, this one masquerading as a run-down bar. The loud voices of patrons, local workers loosening up after the day’s shift, drifted to them through the wooden slats.

  “Look, that’s all I’ve got on short notice,” he said, another puff of smoke hitting her in the face as he breathed out. “If you want a better one, it’ll cost you.”

  She had to fight the urge to laugh. Anyone from a tradehouse could go to another tradehouse and get discounts on services, but he was trying to play her. She was used to people underestimating her until she proved them wrong, and this would be no different.

  “The one for my friend is good,” she said, casting another quick glance at the photo of the man he’d procured for Teo, taped to a white card with Spennard Cleaning Company at the top. The man in the photo was older than Teo, but had the same dark hair and a similar cut. She pocketed that one, then said, “Come on, show me what else you’ve got.”

  He leaned back and put his feet up on the desk, his eyes roving over her once before he said, “Show me what you’ve got under all those clothes and maybe I can—”

  Before he finished speaking, she’d jumped over the desk and placed a knife at his throat. When he gulped, the cigar tumbling from his mouth to the floor, she said, “I don’t have all day.”

  Minutes later, he found a suitable photo of a girl with Sumeranian features—dark hair, light eyes and skin. It was hardly a match, but at least they were the same age, and the servants wouldn’t notice smaller differences if she flashed the card quickly enough. It took the man a while to tape the photo to the card while her knife was still at his throat, but he managed, and then she set off to meet Teo.

  Since that had taken longer than expected, she had to take shortcuts to meet Teo on time, passing as quickly as she could through the Center.

  Her first year as a Blade, Kohl had kept her close on his forays into the city. At first, she’d been miffed, thinking he didn’t trust her to go anywhere on her own. But it was something else. Those nights skirting authorities, discussing technique in the train station’s tower, Kohl introducing her to all his contacts, were a special type of training. While the others had been left to figure out Kosín on their own, Kohl had given her a front-row seat to his mastery of the city. She’d never known why he did this for her, but she hoped it was because for some reason, he didn’t want her to fail.

  She entered a café, waved to the owner, and proceeded to the alley of overflowing dumpsters behind the building. She passed the receiving doors of shops, restaurants, and bars until a street opened on the right and a small huff of air caught her attention.

  The alley served as a grimy courtyard where the residents of each building could hang lines of clothes to dry. Halfway down was the person she’d been thinking of: Kohl.

  But he wasn’t alone. Three men were with him, including their Shadow, Mazir. Kohl slammed one of the other men to the ground, his movements swift and nearly soundless. The second man lunged at him, but Kohl grabbed his arm, stretched it taut, and slammed into it above the elbow to break it.

  A sliver of red moonlight flashed on the barrel of Kohl’s gun. He raised it, and with one bone-shattering shot, Mazir fell to the ground before he even had a chance to defend himself. Two swift shots took out the other men. Aina had stopped breathing. Something about Kohl’s kills always stunned her, as if they were an unattainable level of efficiency that would forever mark her his inferior.

  “Kohl!” she whispered before ducking in case he might fire at her. But he merely looked up, his blue eyes latching on to her without any hint of surprise, as if he’d known she was there the whole time.

  Once she walked toward Kohl, Aina nudged Mazir’s body with her foot. Just like that, one of their own was gone. No one in the Dom would speak of Mazir again after learning that Kohl had killed him. Every time they’d ever joked or worked together evaporated into distant memory. Blank eyes stared up at her, declaring, Screw up and you’ll be next.

  “What did he do?” she whispered, pushing loose hair behind her ear and trying not to picture Mazir’s body being carried on the barge toward the mass graves in the south.

  Kohl pointed to one of the other bodies. “He’s the one who gave the baker information. They were both at the casino together, Mazir drank a bit too much firebrandy and spilled some secrets. Tannis found out that it was him.”

  Aina briefly wondered what secrets Mazir had told the baker, and which of those the baker had sold to the Jackals, but kept the question to herself. Kohl would only tell her that if he wanted to. Too much curiosity would make him distrust her, and then he might become suspicious of her own secrets.

  When Kohl holstered his gun, he bent to confiscate some kors from the dead men’s pockets. He was close; close enough that she could see the crease of his shirt along the muscles of his back, close enough to smell the sweat on him and feel the heat from his body.

  There was an odd tension between them, one partially fueled by the challenges of their job and by … something she hadn’t quite experienced before. It was admiration multiplied by the competition to always be the best. Her body didn’t seem to know the difference between that and the strange heat between them now. What was this push-and-pull dynamic that always kept them just inches away from each other? Did he feel it too, or was it all in her head?

  She shoved down those thoughts. If Kohl could keep emotions and impulse out of his work, then so could she. If she wanted to prove herself to be more valuable to him than Mazir ever was, then she had to be flawless in killing Kouta Hirai.

  “Tonight is the night,” she said, meeting his gaze with nothing but confidence.

  “For your Hirai hit?” Kohl nodded slowly, pride tinging his voice. “You know why I picked you, right? I see a lot of my own ambition in you. You can do this. Good luck, Aina.”

  He walked by her, their shoulders touching briefly. Then he disappeared down the alley without a glance back.

  “I don’t want luck,” she whispered to the dead men.

  * * *

  Minutes later, after a few more shortcuts, Aina reached a burlesque theater on Lyra Avenue. Teo stood off to the side with a bag in hand, his shoulders hunched against the cold wind blowing through a gap in the buildings.

  “Is this your side job?” she asked, gesturing at the theater. He rolled his eyes and led the way.

  As they walked, the crowds grew rowdier. Ni
ghttime revelers were on their way to whatever entertainment they could find: bars that never closed, burlesque theaters and brothels that catered to every taste, the casinos sucking in addicts every day. Music blared on street corners, mixing with loud, drunken shouts that kept her senses sharp and eyes peeled.

  Soon, they reached a garden-lined street of Rose Court lit by purple and silver lights from the window of a shoe shop. Between a bakery and a silk clothier across the road, a curving bridge led to Amethyst Hill.

  The Tower of Steel loomed to their left as they walked, a black monolith against the starlit sky. The streets became dirt, and trees soon surrounded them. She was always uneasy when walking through forests, since the concrete and stone of Kosín were much more familiar to her than grass and tree roots. She had to watch her step carefully to avoid tripping. Teo, on the other hand, had no such problem with the terrain. His parents had been falcon riders in the steppes of Linash, using giant falcons to hunt and to spot gold in the terrain. They’d taught him how to navigate nature. He stepped with a limber gait over fallen branches and twisted roots, his hands touching cypress trunks like they were extensions of his arms.

  The plan was simple. This far from the city, the guards never saw any action, so they wouldn’t expect her and Teo until it was too late and Kouta’s maids were screaming for help. It would be done in less than an hour, and she hoped no more blood would be shed than was necessary. The goal was to take out the mark as quickly and efficiently as possible, not to cause a massacre in a city that already leaked blood from the gutters.

  Yet if someone stood in her way, it was her job to take care of them, and she would.

  They soon reached the gate and waited for a carriage to arrive. If they could have sneaked onto the cleaning company’s carriage, they wouldn’t have had to risk being seen climbing over the gate. But they’d had to come up with a plan fast, and they would be more easily caught as frauds if they entered the company or boarded the carriage with other employees. Besides, they didn’t know when the carriages were set to leave each day, and there hadn’t been enough time to figure it out.

  As they waited, Aina touched the hilts of her knives. Even if she lost all her knives or couldn’t reach one, she had poison darts in a pouch at her waist that would paralyze a target within a minute. Kohl’s lessons rang in her head: A good assassin always has a backup plan.

  “Remember, we only kill if someone gets a good look at us. We incapacitate otherwise, unless they’re trying to kill us. Try to only attack guards, not servants. Do you remember the backup plan?”

  Teo nodded. “If we get caught and all goes to hell, try to get to Kouta anyway—we can’t risk security tightening if we end up having to wait for another day.”

  “Yes. But if we can’t even get into the mansion, or if something else ruins our plan, then we’ll wait for the weekend and sneak in with their food supplies.” She hadn’t believed it when Mirran had told her that all the inhabitants of Amethyst Hill had their food delivered to them every weekend, but now that she’d seen the mansions up close, she wasn’t surprised. Still, waiting for the weekend would be pushing too close to her deadline, so that would remain a backup plan.

  When the carriage rolled through and blocked the guard’s line of sight, they ran to the line of trees near the wall, and Aina hauled herself up. Kneeling, she bent to help Teo carry himself over. It was then, as she was about to jump down, that she felt a sharp tug on her foot.

  She dropped down the wall, twisting out of the grip. Whoever had grabbed her blew sharply on a whistle a couple of times, then reached down to grab her again, but she twisted his arm behind his back, withdrew one of her diamond-edged daggers, and stabbed him through the back of his neck. She pulled out the dagger and he collapsed to the ground where he bled out on the grass.

  His whistle had drawn over the other guard from the gate, who ran toward them now. He saw Aina first, but failed to glimpse Teo passing through the shadows along the wall.

  “Oh, good sir, this guard attacked me on my nightly walk!” she gushed, making her voice as high-pitched as possible. “I slapped him in the face before he could do anything dreadful, but I surely hope he’s all right!”

  The guard slowed, his eyes flicking to the guard on the ground, whose blood he probably couldn’t see because of the dark grass.

  That second cost him. Teo lunged toward him from the shadows. Aina glanced across the fields that separated them and the houses ahead, her nerves rising that someone might have seen them and their plan would be ruined before it even really started. But no one was in sight. A sharp crack and an exhalation of air told her Teo had effectively broken the guard’s neck.

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said, shaking her head as they hid the bodies behind a tree trunk.

  “Do you think we should wait?”

  What would Kohl do? she wondered.

  Yes, there’d been an obstacle, but these guards were dead. They’d been too close, gotten too good of a look at her face—they couldn’t be left alive. Now, they wouldn’t be able to report descriptions of her or Teo to anyone.

  By the time anyone even found the guards’ bodies, Kouta would be dead.

  “Let’s keep going,” she said.

  They soon reached a long sidewalk that led to the mansions. Aina wiped a bit of the guard’s blood on her scarf and swept her hair from her face. They needed to blend in for a while.

  Teo tapped her shoulder twenty minutes into their walk and nodded at a groove in the wooden fence that surrounded the mansion. He slid into the groove and withdrew a set of clothes from the bag he carried. The clothes were cheap imitations of the actual company’s uniforms, the label stitched onto clothes taken from the Dom by a seamstress who lived in Teo’s apartment and had done the job for ten kors. They could only hope the uniforms would be convincing enough to fool Kouta’s servants, hence why nighttime was better for the kill.

  While he changed, Aina kept watch. A rustle of clothes, a grunt as he tried to fit into trousers that were too small, and he was done.

  “Here,” she said, passing him the fake cleaning company identification card.

  Cold air brushed her shoulders as she changed next, taking off her gray jacket, bloodstained scarf, and slim-fitted shirt, stuffing them into Teo’s bag and throwing on the blouse and apron he’d brought. They rearranged their weapons, stuffed the bag in the groove, and set off.

  After slipping past the fence, they hid behind the copse of trees where the carriage usually parked, then stepped into view.

  Lights from countless windows shone down on them as they marched up the front steps like they owned the place. They lazily flashed their fake badges to the servants, who gestured for them to enter through the tall oak doors. As they stepped into the entrance hall, Aina raised an eyebrow at Teo. Even the janitors here had doors opened for them. Then her eyes moved to the interior of the house for the first time, and her composure shriveled in awe.

  It looked as if the Hirai family had robbed a museum. A glistening marble floor spread away in circular fashion with amber clusters embedded in patches. Between shimmering gold panels ahead, vases decorated with herons, cranes, and chrysanthemums stood atop marble plinths.

  They had no idea where the doors led, but they had to start somewhere. As they slid one door open and entered a wide hallway, with royal-blue paint and gold leaves decorating the walls and interspersed by light bulbs in cages of silver vines, Aina pressed close to Teo. Being near this much wealth made her uneasy. She was suffocated by marble, drowned by gold, until they entered another hallway with two people walking toward them and chatting amicably.

  It was a man and a woman, the latter of whom wore a maid’s uniform similar to Aina’s. The man’s breath caught for a moment as he examined the newcomers. Aina and Teo waited for them to make the first move.

  “Excuse me, who are you?” asked the man in a voice that failed to be polite. “Did Spennard send new people again without telling me? I’m sorry, but you�
��ll have to go home.” He shrugged in a way that told Aina he was very much not sorry. “Can’t afford to be paying every sad-looking girl who walks up with a dustbin and a pretty face. Go on, go home, I’ll have Spennard place you somewhere else tomorrow.”

  Silence fell as he finished speaking. Based on Teo’s shifting stance, Aina could tell they were thinking the same thing.

  “Excuse me,” she simpered, walking toward the bossy man. The maid beside him bristled at how forward Aina was acting. To piss her off a bit more, Aina raised a hand and placed it on the man’s forearm. “Do you have to be anywhere urgently? No meetings to run off to? I’d like to chat about my schedule here, if you don’t mind. I’m sure the boss wouldn’t have placed me here without a good reason. You’re not busy, right?”

  “Sorry, miss, my wife and I are going home for the night.” His words tripped over themselves, and a red flush slid up his neck. He gave a consolation nod to the maid, who glared back, unaware that Teo was sliding along the wall behind him.

  “That’s too bad.” Aina kneed him in the stomach, then slammed her fist into his jaw so he dropped to the ground unconscious.

  “No, don’t!” wailed the maid. A second later, Teo placed his arms around her neck and made her fall asleep.

  Aina grabbed the man’s arms to haul him into the nearest empty room, debating whether they’d have to kill these two or if they could leave them unconscious. But just then, an ear-piercing screech sounded from the end of the hall. Another maid stood there with her mouth open in terror. Aina whipped out a dagger from her boot and hurled it, but the woman disappeared around a corner, screaming that there were intruders.

  “I think our plan might be compromised,” Teo said as thunderous footsteps pounded and shrill whistles blared from everywhere at once.

  9