Diamond City

by Francesca Flores

  “You grew up in the Stacks. You don’t know the rest of the city and how it might help or hurt you in any job you take.”

  The last rays of sunlight glinted on his blue eyes as he turned to face her, leaning against one of the pillars of the tower.

  A moment later, she realized she was staring at him and looked away, warmth rising up her cheeks.

  Clearing her throat, she nodded at his tattoo of the vulture hung by a diamond bracelet and asked, “How did you learn? Did your old boss in the Vultures teach you like you’re teaching me?”

  All she’d known at that time was that he used to work with the Vultures, that his old boss was dead, and that Kohl had destroyed every remnant that the Vultures had ever existed except for the tattoo on his arm.

  The side of Kohl’s lips tugged up in a smirk. “Come on, I know you’re curious. What else do you want to know?”

  “How did you fall in with them?” she blurted out.

  He took a long time to answer, but she didn’t speak all the while. She placed a hand on a pillar, ignoring the cold that pressed through the holes in the thin material of her gloves. The fact that the Blood King had offered her a piece of his history, when all anyone really knew was that he was a violent enigma with hundreds of crimes behind him, meant something. Maybe it meant he would trust her soon, that her place here would be secure, and she’d never have to fear losing this new home.

  “You know how my parents came from Duroz to escape the famine before I was born? Well, they didn’t exactly come on a luxury ship. The deal was that they would smuggle weapons into the city in exchange for passage. They held up their end of the deal and got us an apartment on Lyra Avenue, but some gang found out and threatened to report them unless they helped launder money through the tailor’s shop where they worked. They did it for nearly a decade before the Diamond Guards found out and arrested them.”

  “So, then you were on your own?” Like I was, she wanted to add, but stopped herself.

  “For a while, but apparently my parents owed some money to the gang they were working for, and the gang decided this was now my debt. I dodged them for a while, and started taking on any jobs I could get. I even put together my own group, a few kids from the neighborhood—we mostly did small robberies together, pickpocketing tourists. Then the boss of the Vultures found me, and suddenly the threats from the other gang stopped. He offered to protect me if I started doing errands for him, and that if I did my job well, he’d put together a bribe to get my parents out of prison.”

  Her eyes widened. “Did he?”

  “I became a spy for him,” Kohl said with a dark laugh, a faraway look taking over his eyes as he told her his past. “At first, I didn’t care about the details. Never get too curious in Kosín, you know. After a while, I realized I was spying on factory bosses and employees who were planning to fight back when King Verrain was threatening to shut them down. Then, the war started, and my job changed. I started smuggling weapons and money to the factory workers, and then my boss also had me bring information to the people who were working with King Verrain. He was playing both sides. I didn’t care one way or the other. When the war died down, I asked my boss if it was time to put up the bribe for my parents.”

  His bitter tone already gave away the answer. But she asked anyway. “He said no?”

  “He said bribing wouldn’t work anymore, that things had gotten stricter with the Diamond Guards after the war. We’d have to break my parents out with the help of a contact he had in the Tower. We would meet at secret tunnels leading into the Tower and break my parents out together. I was stupid enough to believe him. Turns out, he thought I was a loose end that needed to be cut off. I knew too many of his secrets, especially how he was passing information to both sides during the war, and he just wanted to get out of Kosín with the money he’d earned. Diamond Guards were waiting for me at the meet-up spot and threw me in a cell. Boss was nowhere in sight. A few days later, I found out my parents died a few months after they were arrested. Some illness they got in the prison.”

  She was suddenly glad his boss was dead.

  “How did you get out of the Tower?” she asked. “Start a prison riot or something?”

  “Sometimes you have to be subtle. I used a little stealth. A little poison.” His eyes hardened again, a complete contrast to the smile spreading on his face. “Things you need to improve at before I throw you back on the street.”

  The next day, he’d told her it was time to do her first job. She’d been frightened, but had agreed, determined to become the best at whatever would help her survive: killing, spying, brewing poisons, telling lies. Anything except firing the pistols that made her fingers shake.

  Now, with the Sentinel’s reward for her capture hanging over her head, she still knew there was only one option—keep going, keep fighting, keep defending herself. That was what had gotten her where she was now, with Kohl’s support in opening her own tradehouse, and it was what would keep her here.

  She turned off Lyra Avenue and onto one of the narrow streets of the Wings. White apartment buildings towered over her as she picked up the pace. At an intersection, she finally caught sight of Teo across the street.

  She hissed his name, looking around to check if anyone was watching them. The street was empty except for a man sleeping on the corner.

  Teo’s eyes widened when he saw her, and he jogged across the street to reach her.

  “Teo, we’re rich!” she whispered.

  He took a few deep breaths, like he’d been running. The sun brightened his golden-brown skin, his copper eyes, highlighting the sweat on his forehead. His gaze flicked to the street again as if expecting an attack at any moment, then he took her hand to pull her into the shadows of the nearest alley.

  “Thank the Mothers you’re safe,” he said. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “Oh, did you hear about the Sentinel?” Her brow furrowed. “They do have a good drawing of me, but I’m not really—”

  “Not that. You haven’t heard? Kouta isn’t dead. He survived.”

  “What?” The word rang hollow in her ears. “No, he didn’t.”

  Teo shook his head, a growing dread in his eyes. “Maybe the Sentinel hasn’t heard yet, but news is getting around on the streets, so it’s only a matter of time. This morning I went to the black market to ask around for jobs, and I heard people talking about it.”

  Her mouth went dry. Images flashed through her mind, uncertain and weak. Kouta Hirai falling off the chair, red blood dripping onto cedar wood, the distinctive slice of skin and arteries under her trusted dagger. That very dagger seemed to pulse under her clothes, warning that she’d messed up.

  She should have known not to be too proud of herself.

  “Kohl.” She suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

  In his office, his hands holding hers; words of praise and promises of glory; Mazir’s glass-like eyes staring up at her, asking why she hadn’t yelled out or done anything to stop Kohl from killing him.

  Aina held a hand to her forehead and took a few deep breaths. This was the first time she’d ever messed up on a kill, but she knew that wouldn’t matter to Kohl. Her future slipped out of her grasp like smoke from rusted steel mills.

  “He can’t be alive,” she whispered. Before Teo could do more than call her name, she ran, the sun blinding her as she raced toward the Dom.

  12

  Her feet slammed across the pavement, propelling her past the bone-white apartments and toward the line of shops and bars that led south toward the Stacks. Pigeons darted out of the way and a girl sweeping outside a storefront yelped when Aina nearly crashed into her.

  Whispers sounded from everywhere, words like Hirai and assassin and one hundred thousand kors, boiling a new energy through the city’s veins with the price on her head. If she reached the Dom before Kohl learned of Kouta’s survival, he might give her a second chance. Running in the opposite direction would only mean her death. She fled through two n
arrow streets choked with pedestrians and down a back road. Entrances flicked past her vision, growing blurrier the faster she ran. But as she sprinted past an alley, something yanked her roughly inside.

  She barely got her hands to her knives when she was slammed into a wall, the back of her head banging off it so hard, she bit her tongue and her vision blackened briefly.

  Kohl Pavel stood in front of her, one hand gripping her arm so tightly, it went numb.

  She tried to twist out of his grasp, but his fist collided into the side of her head with a hard thunk. Her legs almost gave out, but she managed to stay upright. Her head spun, everything blurred and dizzying, so she couldn’t tell if he was moving toward her again or if he’d stopped in place.

  Survival instincts kicked in. She jumped out of the way and grabbed the knives from her boots.

  “Don’t be stupid, Aina,” Kohl growled, raising his gun in the air between them, a cold look on his face that made her feel like any other target. She stared down the barrel and imagined what the air would smell like as the bullet flew forth to lodge in her brain. His voice slid toward her like smoke, darkening the space around them. “Why is Kouta Hirai still breathing?”

  Aina sat on the cracked cobblestones, taking deep breaths to ease the dizziness from the punch. If Kohl had wanted to kill her, he would have already. Instead, he had knocked her around a bit and was ready to talk now. Maybe she could still prevail.

  “I could swear he was dead,” she said, staring at her clasped hands. They didn’t quite seem like hers anymore.

  How had this kill been robbed from her? She’d worked every day since joining the Dom to get better, to become as formidable as Kohl to prevent outcomes exactly like this. Her kills amounted to her respect, her future, her way off the streets. She would never allow herself to forget what it was like to have nothing, and she would never allow herself to return to nothing simply by failing at a job.

  Her voice grew louder, angrier, roiling with the injustice of it. “I practically decapitated him.”

  Kohl approached and knelt in front of her. His arm with the vulture tattoo reached out, and he touched her hair lightly. It was something icy and fiery at the same time, something she wanted to recoil from and draw closer toward and simply couldn’t locate a middle ground within.

  “You didn’t stick around to make sure? You wanted to get out of there quickly? Were you scared?”

  “No! I just…” She swallowed hard and moved a strand of dark hair behind her ears, brushing against his hand as she did—wishing he would take it. “I thought he was dead. I don’t know what else to say.”

  She expected a reprimand, not for him to trail his hands down the side of her face to rest at her chin. It ached from the punch, but his touch was warm against the building bruise. He was so close, so formidable, and so unattainable, she wished more than ever that she could be his.

  What is wrong with me? she thought, then shook it away.

  If she wanted it, there was nothing wrong with it, was there? And he might be angry at her now, but wasn’t he right to be? She was the one who’d messed up on a job.

  “Do you have any idea what it means that you’ve failed?” Something darkened in his voice, and her chest tightened in response. “This wasn’t any regular job, Aina. You were sent to kill one of the richest Steels in this goddess-forsaken city, and you failed. Have you forgotten what Steels do to people like you who reach too high?”

  “I can pay back the money,” she said, the words blurring together in her rush to get them out.

  “The money doesn’t matter.” He exhaled sharply, his warm breath hitting her face, and she cursed herself for leaning closer. “People come to me because they know my grunts can get the job done. If I disappoint some angry or vengeful person off the street, that’s no problem—I send one of you to shut them up. But when I start disappointing people in power, that’s a problem.”

  She frowned, then asked the forbidden question, “Who was the client?”

  “What gives you the right to know?” His eyes widened in false surprise, and her confidence slipped again. “Oh, do you think you’re still my favored Blade? You’ve ruined that for yourself, Aina.”

  Shame burned across her cheeks. She swallowed against the dryness in her throat, but it didn’t alleviate the cold numbing sensation in her bones.

  “Does this mean you won’t let me open my own tradehouse now?” She hated how small her voice sounded.

  “Have you forgotten everything I’ve taught you?” His forehead crinkled in sadness for the briefest second, quickly replaced by indifference. “You and the others are worth more dead to me than failed. If you can’t make people believe you’ll hurt them, what reason would anyone have to fear you? If I protect you, if I still favor you, a contender for my position who’s failed so miserably, I lose all credibility. Everything I’ve built would fall apart. The safe home I’ve made for people like you would become an open target. You’ve lost my protection, Aina.”

  He’d said the words, but they took a long while to sink in. This didn’t seem real. It was too terrible to be real.

  Her voice trembled as she said, “You say protecting me will make you look weak, but you’re already protecting me by warning me.”

  He turned his face slightly so she couldn’t see what was in his eyes. In the span of one day, she’d fallen from the top of the world to the dirt at his shoes.

  “Not only will you have people coming after you to get the reward for your capture,” he finally said, turning back to her, “but anyone with a grudge against you, anyone whose brother or son you’ve killed, anyone you’ve injured in the line of work, will be free to come after you too.”

  “How do I fix it?”

  “Your mark thinks he’s invincible now that you’ve failed. Strike soon. Either Kouta Hirai is left breathing at the end of this or you are, not both. Bring his head and leave it on my desk within a week. If you fail again, I will not be so kind.”

  The murderous look in his eyes was enough to make her jump to her feet. She raced down the alley, heart pounding in her ears, and turned the corner.

  A gunshot from behind her rang out, the bullet slamming into the brick wall inches from her face.

  13

  She didn’t stop running until she reached the end of the street, then ducked behind barrels of freshly caught trout at a shop front. The stench was horrific, but this was the closest place to hide. Peering around the edge of the barrels, she watched the mouth of the alley. In a few minutes, Kohl appeared. He turned in the direction of Lyra Avenue and disappeared from view.

  The scent of smoke from the shot he’d fired permeated her senses. Countless bullets had been fired in her direction, but this shot rang in her ears over and over. Her head still pounded from Kohl’s punch. She gulped to bring some moisture to her dry throat. A heavy weight settled on her chest, making it hard to breathe, and hope vanished from her like smoke plumes into the sky above Kosín’s factories; it left a stain.

  She was a fool for thinking this chance to be successful was actually real. Whenever happiness seemed close, reality snatched it away. She would have been better off sticking with Kohl for the rest of her life. At least then she’d have his protection. Whatever reputation she’d built up over the years was gone now.

  It was true: Good things don’t happen to girls who come from nothing.

  She’d been a fool to think she was different. But if she, a trained killer, made into one of the most feared people in the south of the city, couldn’t make something of herself, what did that say for kids still sleeping on the street with no one to help them? She’d failed them all.

  And Kohl had shot at her. Kohl had nearly killed her.

  He never misses, she thought to reassure herself. That had been a warning shot, nothing else.

  One of her hands impulsively clenched a weed growing in the alley. The weeds stuck out of the irregular patches of cobblestone, choked and curling from green to yellow to brown.

&n
bsp; An image as clear as a summer sky flashed through her mind: rain pounding on the weeds and flowers that had grown near her old house. Her father had knelt next to her, his thick, black mustache ruffled by the wind, and together they’d watched the lightning blaze across the sky on one of those quiet days before the Estrel Ka-Noten, the night the stars fell, when there was so much blood and violence that people said even the sky looked red and no one could see the stars. Her parents had only lived for a few years after the war.

  A peal of thunder had sent her cowering under his big arms. She’d told him she wished she could be one of the creatures from a particular Milano folktale he’d told her, the magical being that could change form between bird, butterfly, insect, and any other animal as easily as breathing. Then, she could transform into a firefly and dart through all the raindrops with the Mothers guiding her until she reached somewhere dry.

  She usually suppressed memories of her parents, but now her father’s words came back to her clearly. In the crispest southern Milano dialect, her father had told her: Even if a lion dresses in silk, it will always be a lion.

  She couldn’t have become a firefly to escape the rain any more easily than she could cease to be the helpless girl Kohl had saved from the bombing six years ago. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remind herself she wasn’t helpless anymore.

  She replayed the events of Kouta’s death in her mind, trying to figure out where exactly she’d gone wrong.

  The only thing that stood out in her mind was the young heir, Ryuu Hirai.

  Her thoughts fixed on him, blotting out everything else until a buzzing sound built up in her ears. She imagined the color of his blood on her blade.

  Kohl’s advice that she should kill anyone who saw her rang true, though this had been the first time she’d ever failed to follow his words.

  The idea sent a tremor of fear through her. Without him on her side, she wouldn’t just be at risk of capture or murder. She could easily picture herself sliding back into old habits. Her hand went to her nose, searching for traces of glue. Nothing, for now. If it was a choice between going back to the streets or dying, she’d gladly let Kohl stab her in the heart.