“I was trying to get you to stop, obviously,” Tannis said, letting out an exasperated breath. “Should have known you were too ambitious to read between the lines of your dream job. I knew you were loyal to Kohl for the most part, so I couldn’t say anything and risk you ratting me out to him.”
“If that’s true, then why did you try to kill me in the alley later? You said Kohl gave you the job instead.”
“That was a lie. I knew Kohl would hear about our fight if I confronted you in public, and that would prove my loyalty to him. It worked, since he never doubted me until last night. And I thought that if I fought you, maybe injured you and made you think Kohl didn’t want you on the job anymore, you would stop trying, but … I have to admit, I admire your stubbornness.” She flashed Aina a quick grin. “Mazir, on the other hand, he tried to play the game. But he failed.”
“What does Mazir have to do with Bautix’s plans?”
“He was Kohl’s Shadow, one of the best spies in the city, so I’m sure he figured out what our boss was up to a long time ago,” Tannis answered. “But he got greedy. He told that baker you killed what Kohl was up to and got the baker to sell the information to the Jackals. Mazir knew the Jackals might go to Bautix to try to steal the job from Kohl. He hoped the Jackals would pay him for this, but one of Kohl’s informants in the casino overheard the conversation and told me what was going on. I told Kohl, and he sent you to silence the baker.”
“And then you told him it was Mazir?” Aina asked, remembering her old colleague’s glassy eyes staring up at her in the alley.
“I had to or else he wouldn’t trust me,” Tannis said in a quiet voice. “The Jackals tried to move in on the job. Kohl couldn’t stand that, so when he let you go, he knew the Jackals would come after you and that you would kill enough of them that he wouldn’t have to worry about them for a long while.”
Aina crossed her arms and scoffed. “You’re saying he cut me off because he knew I would end up doing his dirty work for him?”
“Yes, but I doubt he knew it would end up this way. If you looked at the reports close enough, you’d see a job or two that I was sent on. But I killed my marks and no one saw me, so Kohl had no reason to cut me off. Bautix still blamed ‘a murderer from the Stacks,’ but he didn’t investigate any further because the job was done. All that mattered was that no one connected it to him. But then when Hirai survived … Bautix had to keep up the search for you, at least until Hirai was killed, and I bet he was putting pressure on Kohl to finish the job. I think Kohl knew you would manage to kill Hirai eventually, but Bautix wanted the job done before the princess arrived.”
“So then Kohl killed Kouta himself, but didn’t even notice that Kouta had the note in his pocket that would doom Kohl and Bautix’s entire plan.” Aina let out a bitter laugh at the irony. Kohl’s confidence had finally derailed him instead of helped him.
He hadn’t turned everyone against her. Maybe together, she and Tannis could change things.
“Before you came to fight Kohl last night, before I turned on him and saved you … he asked me to be his backup to kill the princess right as she’s given the black diamond at midnight,” Tannis said, glancing over her shoulder down the hall. “There’s not much time left.”
“What will you do instead?”
“Stop him,” Tannis said immediately, her gold eyes flashing in the dark hall. “Let’s fight him together, but I’ll let you have the killing blow. You deserve it for what he did to your parents.”
Aina smiled. “Looks like we finally understand each other.”
44
They traversed the next fifty feet of the hall in silence. Aina’s eyes flicked to every dark corner for a sign that Kohl might be here.
Voices rose nearby as the stone balcony appeared on their left. Laughter echoed and glasses clinked from the ballroom below filled with unsuspecting guests. On the right, a wide-open window curved toward the ceiling with only a knee-length ledge separating them from the edge. The view showed the grasslands behind the Tower. Rain fell in steady torrents outside, sweeping diagonally and pattering steadily on the window ledge and the first foot of space inside the hall.
Cold wind cut through the window and ruffled the thick black curtain that hung on the inside of the balcony. A thin crack of light shone through the center of the curtains to reveal a sliver of the ballroom. It was the perfect place for an assassin to wait with their target in sight below, and the perfect amount of space for the barrel of a gun to slide through. She imagined Kohl there, still and relaxed like he was before every kill. She wondered if he’d look so calm when she was the one pointing a dagger at him.
Tannis held up a hand. Their footsteps slowed to silence. Then, Tannis crouched down next to the curtain and peered underneath it, while Aina searched the shadows of the balcony for any sign of Kohl. Her pulse raced with nerves.
They had to find him before he carried out this job and sank the country into war. She had to find him and confront him for what he’d done to her parents, what he was trying to do to the city all for his own benefit.
When she stood again, Tannis whispered, “Everyone’s down there, including the princess. I don’t know when Kohl—”
Just then, the air shifted behind them.
Kohl’s dagger swung toward them. Aina dodged the strike with a sharp intake of breath, but Tannis was caught off guard. The blade clipped her arm, and she hissed in pain.
Taking out her dagger, Aina shifted behind Kohl. A throwing star appeared in Tannis’s fingers, and she and Aina locked eyes over Kohl’s shoulder for the briefest second.
They both struck at the same time, but Kohl moved so fast, he became a blur in front of them. Aina, lunging forward, stumbled and barely missed the hiss of Tannis’s throwing star passing by her neck.
Aina caught herself from falling, but then a tight grip latched on to her wrist and twisted. She gritted her teeth in pain as her weapon clattered on the stone floor. She raised her fist, but Kohl caught it in midair, then shoved her toward the balcony so hard, her feet left the floor.
She grabbed on to the balcony at the last second, her twisted wrist slamming into it to stop herself from going over the edge. The wrist cracked, and she bit down on her lip to avoid crying out in pain. She whipped around in time to see Kohl’s fist flying toward her throat.
Dodging it by an inch, his cold knuckles scraping against her collarbone, she kneed him in the stomach. The next moment, Tannis stepped between them.
Aina retrieved her blade from the floor, but her dominant hand ached from slamming it into the stone balcony. It was too stiff to be as dexterous as she needed it to be. She switched the dagger to her other hand. She’d trained fighting with it plenty of times and was good enough, but it was still a disadvantage.
The rain pounding on the Tower walls reached her ears as she straightened. Kohl and Tannis fought fast and hard, quick blurs of steel flashing across the dark hall.
Tannis cried out suddenly and fell back a few steps from Kohl. A knife was buried in her abdomen. Her gold eyes widened, her face paling as she gripped the blade’s handle. Blood leaked from the wound and coated her hands. Kohl moved toward her like a vulture circling its prey.
“No,” Aina whispered under breath, and in two quick strides, she reached them. As he lifted his blade to deal a killing blow, Aina kicked him in the back.
He fell, but twisted around and swept his feet across her ankles, so she went down with him. Tannis had scrambled toward the open window, clutching her wound and leaving a trail of blood. Kohl knocked Aina’s wrist to the side, and her knife skidded across the floor.
His knife flashed in the moonlight. The blade fell toward her chest. She rolled away at the last second.
But as she did, a sharp pain reached her arm. His knife had cut right through it.
When Aina pushed herself to a stand, blood poured from her arm, making her head spin.
Then Kohl’s fist collided with her jaw.
Her teeth cla
shed together as she fell back and slammed into the nearest wall. Her knees shook, and she dropped to the floor, blacking out for one long second.
When her vision wavered back in, she tried to roll away, but stopped in place when Kohl raised a gun and pointed it at her head.
All thoughts, rational and otherwise, fled to be replaced by a numbing fear. All she saw was her mother’s head turning red in front of her and her father’s body knocked back by the bullets striking his chest. Nausea rose through her. She was going to die the same way they had, by the same man.
The Blood King’s voice softened as his finger settled upon the trigger. “I’m just doing a job, Aina.”
45
She counted down her last seconds, the cold barrel of the gun the only reality she was reduced to.
With a clatter, the gun landed on the ground ten feet away. She blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of what had happened. He’d thrown the gun to the side. He hadn’t shot her. The breath returned to her lungs in one ragged inhalation that sent a searing pain through her head.
Kohl shook his head slowly. One of Tannis’s throwing stars was buried in his shoulder, but he didn’t bother to remove it. Sweat poured down his face and blood trickled from the wound, but he didn’t even seem to notice it.
“I tried to give you what you wanted, Aina. Don’t you understand? I got you off the streets. I taught you everything. I agreed to let you open your own tradehouse. I was hired for the hit on your parents, but I didn’t know you—”
“And you’re still working for the same man who hired you back then!” she spat, gesturing toward the ballroom where Bautix was sure to be.
Kohl faced her with a pained expression, as if he truly didn’t understand why she was so angry. “I’ve given you so many chances, yet you can’t see why your mistake almost cost me everything. I need to protect my own interests too, Aina, and I thought you were smart enough to understand that, but here you are fighting me.”
Before he finished speaking, she was laughing. “And what? Do you think I owe you something just because you showed me decent human kindness when you saved me from that bombing? Even that was a lie. You saved me because you felt bad for orphaning me, and you gave me up the minute you saw me as a threat to your reputation. You don’t get to have me and push me away whenever you want. You don’t get to kill my parents and then expect gratitude for picking me up off the streets you put me on. I owe you nothing, Kohl.”
Before he could say any more, Aina lunged to the right. They moved at the same time, but she swung around first and kicked at his ribs.
He dodged the attack, then aimed a punch at her face. She stepped toward the window, pushing his arm away to deflect the hit.
Blood flowed from her injured arm the whole time, but there was nothing she could do about it now. All that mattered was ending him.
As if reading each other’s minds, they brought out daggers at the same time and moved toward each other in one swift step. Metal scraped against metal and steel flashed in the dark as they fought.
Aina leapt backward to avoid his next strike, which missed her by a hair’s breadth. That was another moment, like with the gun, where he could have killed her, but he missed or took a second too long to deliver the blow. She’d never seen him miss before.
Whatever this hesitation was, she could use it against him.
She swept her dagger across Kohl’s side and jumped past him. He inhaled sharply at the cut.
A smile lit up her face, and she beckoned him forward. They came at each other again. Aina swung underhand with her daggers, aiming for his side, when he caught them in place with his knife. Her arms began to shake. A small intake of breath told her he was finding this fight exhausting too.
She pushed upward with a loud grunt. His weapons flew into the air and clattered on the stone floor.
But he jumped out of the way of her next strike and grabbed his gun off the floor, lifting it faster than she could blink.
Paralyzed with fear, her only hope was that the Mothers would protect her for once.
But when his finger met the trigger, there was a pause of one second that seemed to last forever.
He fired.
She moved. The bullet missed her head by inches, but she stepped back toward him and swept her blades across his unguarded chest.
The smoke of the fired shot invaded her nostrils, filled her lungs as she watched him falter. She twisted his wrist so his gun dropped to the floor.
“Aina,” he said, backing up toward the window. His hands frantically tried to stop the flow of blood, but there was too much. He looked at his abandoned gun, but she blocked him from moving toward it. “Please. Listen—”
“I’m done listening to you,” she hissed, cutting off his words. She forced him toward the window so his knees hit against the ledge. He caught his balance right before falling over, but she didn’t stop. Rain fell onto them in wild gusts as she forced him to lean farther back.
As she pressed her blade under his ribs, he said in a rush, “You really think this will stop Bautix from getting the princess killed?”
She paused, the knife on the verge of piercing his heart. “You let me worry about Bautix.”
Taking her pause as an opportunity to continue, Kohl whispered, “What’s one thing an assassin always makes sure to have?”
“A backup,” she whispered instantly. He stared her down without blinking, but a slow smile spread on his face. She pressed the knife in a little deeper and the smile dropped. “Who is it? Where are they?”
Kohl laughed despite the blade pressing into his skin. “It was Tannis at first, but she turned on me, so what makes you think Bautix would trust me to pick a new backup? All I know for sure is that your time is running out.”
As if waiting for his words, the first chime of the midnight bells rang out.
Aina stepped away, her eyes racing across the balcony. Kohl slumped down near the window.
He was wounded. She could snuff out his life in seconds.
The second bell chimed. In its wake, she whispered, “This isn’t over.”
Three bells rang as she sped around the balcony, skidding to a stop to stare through the folds of the curtain. Hundreds of people were in the crowd below, gathered around a stage. Teo must have been among them, but she couldn’t pick him out from here. Bautix stood on the stage with the rest of the Sentinel, Ryuu, Raurie, and the Linasian princess. Ryuu glanced over his shoulder as if he could sense something was wrong. Would Bautix try something himself if Aina managed to kill the sniper? Would Ryuu or Raurie get caught in the line of fire?
Four bells. She whipped her gaze around the balcony surrounding the ballroom, searching for the best vantage point where another sniper could be hidden, but everything looked exactly the same except for a few statues poised at the corners of the balcony and the large, golden clock hanging above the crowd, embedded in the opposite wall. The backup sniper had to be here somewhere on the upper level. Five bells.
As she ran, six and seven bells ringing, she couldn’t help it; she heard Kohl’s voice the first night they’d spoken to each other. Do you want to know the secret to survival?
Eight bells. She skidded around the corner, on the far end of the hall.
You count and you look.
Nine bells. She heard Kohl’s voice in her ears again and whipped her head around as she ran, expecting him to fire at her from a corner.
You count everything and you look at everyone.
Her eyes widened. The clock. Its incessant ticking raced in her ears as the tenth bell rang, blending with her footsteps pounding down the hall.
Are you paying attention, street child?
She swung open the low door behind the clock and jumped down onto the narrow wooden platform next to Bautix’s backup—a boy with a jackal’s bared jaw tattooed on his arm.
It was Olaf, the same boy she’d spared in the warehouse. He carried a rifle on his shoulder, but turned at the noise of Aina landing on the wooden p
latform next to him in the base of the clock. Electric yellow light enveloped them from under the wooden slats, highlighting how his eyes widened when he turned to face her.
Eleven bells. Applause rose up in the audience. Olaf fired at Aina, who flattened herself against the clock face, letting the bullet blast through the side of the clock. She shoved the end of his rifle aside, leaving him open.
Twelve bells—she swept her blade across his throat.
46
Midnight passed while Aina stood in the silence of the clock, breathing heavily as Olaf died before her. His blood trickled through the wooden base of the clock to dot the yellow lights underneath.
Turning from his body, she stared between the clock’s numbers toward the balcony across the ballroom from her, where she’d left Kohl. What she’d whispered to him came back to her now: This isn’t over.
Pushing past Olaf’s body, she lifted herself out of the clock and onto the stone walkway of the balcony.
Her footsteps slowed, echoing slightly as she rounded the corner. Tannis was still seated near the window, her head resting on her chest. Kohl was gone.
“How is your wound?” she whispered as she approached Tannis.
Tannis had ripped off the sleeve of her jacket to wrap it tightly around the wound on her abdomen. The blood flow had slowed, though her face was still drawn and exceptionally pale under the bright blue waves of her hair.
“You got better at fighting than the last time I saw you,” she said with a tight grimace. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him from leaving.”
“Wait here,” Aina said, squeezing Tannis’s shoulder. “I’ll get help for you.”
When she nodded, Aina turned and retreated down the hall. Kohl was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t matter now. She had to check that Bautix wouldn’t try anything else once he realized his plans had been ruined. As she walked, she took her scarf and tied it around the wound on her arm.
Diamond City Page 28
