Maybe he was waiting for her to fail.
“After this job, you can start your own tradehouse,” he said finally. “As agreed, you won’t owe me commission like the others. I trained you, so I trust you to manage it well without my help. I’ll extend my protection to you until you have things running.”
Her eyes widened. One more kill, and Kohl would give her all she wanted. She’d been begging for this chance for years. But he’d never indicated a finish line before, had only told her that the choice to set her free was his and his alone.
Good things don’t happen to girls who come from nothing.
She shook the thought away. It was time to take advantage of what Kohl was offering. She nodded once.
“Choose the best partner you can find. I’ll leave you to decide how to split the payment.”
Aina cleared her throat. “That’s generous.”
“We have to take kindness where we can find it. I assume you’ll choose your Linasian friend. The client has given us a week to do the job before he takes his money elsewhere. If you succeed, you get your tradehouse. If you fail…” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
She was well aware of the consequences. If she failed, she would just be a grunt who’d reached too high, someone unworthy of Kohl’s protection … and then she’d be his enemy. There was no choice but to succeed.
For the only time since she was fifteen and on her first assignment, fear wormed through her at the idea of killing someone. She pushed it away as quickly as it arrived. This was her one chance to rise above what she’d been given at birth, to stake out a spot of power in the city that had tried to take her life—and sanity—from her.
She’d decorate the streets in Kouta Hirai’s blood before she let this chance slip away.
“I’ll get to work.” She turned to leave, but Kohl’s hand latched on to her wrist, a flash of silver cuff links appearing at the edge of her vision. She tensed up at first, then relaxed into his grip. “Yes?”
“This is our biggest opportunity yet, Aina. The world is our oyster and Kosín its pearl. You know how valuable certain gems are.” Her blood turned cold, freezing her veins from the back of her neck down her spine, along her arm to where his hand still gripped her wrist. “Are you going to take this one or let someone else sell it for you?”
She unhooked her hand from his. “I’ll take it all.”
4
A loud boom shook Aina awake the next morning. She sat up immediately, all thoughts of sleep forgotten. The others were already on their feet.
“What the hell was that?” groaned Mazir, Kohl’s Shadow, before pulling the covers back over his head.
Mirran, Kohl’s Fox, crouched in front of the window with the distinctive bright blue hair and gold eyes of Kaiyanis people. “Looks like some idiot stepped on one of Kohl’s bombs.”
Shaking her head, Aina got out of bed. She’d squeezed in a shower the night before and worn her clothes to sleep, as usual, so all she had to do was throw on her jacket, boots, and scarf, then get started on this new job.
“Well, I’m not cleaning up the mess,” she said cheerfully. They grumbled in response, rolling back under their blankets as Aina closed the door behind her with a soft click.
She walked down the second-floor hall, plain white walls and cold, gray floor surrounding her, past the other bedroom for Kohl’s three young recruits. She’d spent a few years there, training until Kohl trusted her enough to take on real jobs. While they all knew the basics of combat and espionage, he usually preferred that each of them was more skilled in one area than the others—he’d decided Aina would best serve as a Blade. The recruits were already awake, challenging each other to a knife-throwing game that Kohl had surely put them up to. She paused outside the door of the training room and watched as one of them hit the center of the target and let out a triumphant whoop, then she went downstairs.
Kohl’s office was empty. She slipped inside, then entered a side door into the room where they kept ingredients for poisons. She restocked on the poison darts she used, then went to the armory to replace one of the small blades strapped to the knuckles of her left hand that had gotten bent. As she searched for one, her eyes scanned the two-story, circular armory lined with guns and blades of all sizes. Her first job here, before Kohl started training her to be a Blade, had been to pick up weapons from a warehouse in the east of the city. So many arms purchases went through that place, it was easy for Kohl to buy them in bulk with no one asking questions.
After the war, gangs had risen up to turn a profit in the midst of the city’s rebuilding, and Kohl had built the Dom—the first tradehouse. He kept it and all the other tradehouses in the city safe as long as they paid their commission to him on time. Hers, once she completed this job, would be the first that didn’t owe him a percentage of her earnings. The thought made her nerves flutter with excitement, but she refused to let it get to her head. First, she needed to become a weapon, kill Kouta Hirai, and collect her pay. Then Kohl would see her as someone he could respect and fear. And then, maybe he’d be able to look at her and see something more between them than their work.
Most of the city still slept as she headed to her destination, tracing familiar paths up the Stacks’ dirt roads. Her boots slid on streets turned muddy from an overnight rain as she ascended the twisting hills that led to the rest of the city. She soon joined a throng of grim-faced workers headed to the factories, steel mills, and textile plants with their lunches in metal boxes. At a bend in the road that led to a main street lined with tailors, locksmiths, and repair shops, Aina slowed.
An elderly Sumeranian man sat in the shadowed doorway of his home, which was crumbling on one side. Blood dripped from a small cut on his pale arm onto a rough diamond he held between two grubby fingers. Her breath caught at the sight, and hazy memories came: her own parents praying to the Mothers, sneaking diamonds in their sleeves, drops of blood falling on the dirt floor.
Loud voices sounded from the top of the upward curving road. Two Diamond Guards appeared at the bend, talking casually to each other, and began walking down the hill. She imagined them spotting the man, yanking him by the neck with their nail-studded leashes, dragging him to a more public place where they would execute him.
“Hey!” she hissed to the old man, who ignored her.
Like her parents had, he practiced his faith without a shred of fear. Her heart ached when the Diamond Guards punished the faithful—the Inosen—since they had done nothing wrong. But she would run and save herself if any trouble started.
As he held the diamond, the man muttered, “Amman inoke.”
All blood could be used for magic. No matter if it came from an unfaithful person, an Inosen, or a Sacoren—a priest—it all produced the same effect.
But only Inosen who had been blessed by a Sacoren could take blood, channel it through diamonds, and wield magic with that murmured prayer, Amman inoke.
“The Diamond Guards are coming!” she said in a low voice, her eyes flicking toward the approaching guards.
Air rippled around the man, whipping his loose clothes around him. The diamond shone with an internal light through the streaks of blood, and a moment later, the house began to restore itself. Mud brick solidified on the side wall, dry and hard-packed into a perfect corner. While the magic couldn’t cause miracles, cure most diseases, or create things out of thin air, it used the power of earth and blood. It provided shelter, helped grow crops on arid land, stopped blood loss, and cured blood-related illnesses.