Her father had used it to repair a crack in the street outside their house after Aina had seen a woman trip there. Her mother had used it on a local boy who’d been stabbed in a mugging, preventing his loss of blood so he would survive.
Using magic was how people helped themselves when they had no other option.
The man wiped the blood from his arm as the Diamond Guards approached and passed them. He’d tucked the used diamond between his fingers and waited until the guards’ footsteps faded away before finally looking around at her and winking.
Shaking her head, she left him to risk his own life how he pleased. Plenty of Inosen had escaped detection during and after the war, though it was still a fraction of how many had lived before. But something thousands of years old didn’t die out simply because the steam engine had shown its pretty face. While the rich could afford steam and steel, bright lights and indoor plumbing, the poor couldn’t. For many, magic was their best choice. They would pray to the Mothers and practice magic to their last breaths, and she’d never deny them that bit of freedom. But she still wished, for their sake, that they would be more discreet.
If her parents had been more discreet, maybe they wouldn’t have been shot when she was eight. Maybe she wouldn’t have grown up homeless and been turned into a professional killer. But she was proud of her few successes now, even if her parents would hate what she’d become.
They’d always believed life was precious, a gift from the Mothers. She couldn’t help but imagine they’d be disappointed if they knew what she was. She wanted to shout: You died and left me to this city; what did you expect?
As she approached the Center of the city, a train whistle broke the morning air, and smoke puffed above the station to stain the sky gray. The streets turned from dirt to concrete, and more people crowded around her in the early rush to work.
Her mind worked through the details of what she knew about the mansions on Amethyst Hill, the privately hired guards who worked there, and how exactly she might get Kouta Hirai alone. But before she did any of that, she had to ask the only person she really trusted to partner with her and put his own life on the line for this job.
Turning up a side street that wound between apartment buildings, budget inns, and low-end shops, Aina approached a bar with a sign declaring it The Tipsy Fish. Right outside of it was a notice board with news from this morning, the letters freshly inked by the printing press.
A GEM FIT FOR A PRINCESS
The Royal Princess of Linash, Saïna Goleph, is due to arrive in Kosín in a fortnight to celebrate a new, stronger alliance between our nations.
The princess will be gifted with a five-carat black diamond jewel, as a token of our new alliance, at a reception ball to be hosted at the Tower of Steel.
Aina nearly snorted with laughter as she scanned the rest of the article, which went on about how both their countries were moving into the international sphere and wanting to make more alliances and trade agreements. The jeweler had only offered to pay her five thousand kors for a similar gem, but if it was valuable enough to give to this princess, then it must be worth much more. If she ever got her hands on one, she’d use a knife at his throat to make him pay double the market price.
Shaking her head at the article, she entered the bar. It was nearly empty except for a few early-morning regulars. A group of old men played cards in the corner with a cloud of smoke around them. A smile crossed Aina’s face as she took in the person she was looking for—his broad shoulders, the dark jacket he always wore that hid the multiple guns he carried. Seated on a bar stool, he spun a half-empty mug in his hands and chatted leisurely with the ruddy-faced bartender.
Aina approached and checked that no one was behind her. Then she pressed one foot on a floorboard, making it creak, and threw herself to the ground.
The man rose and fired a gun into the space behind him.
5
The gunshot slammed against her eardrums as the bullet made a hole in the wall.
The bartender dropped a bottle of firebrandy in shock, and glass shattered across the floor. Amid the bartender’s swearing, one of the card players yelled through the haze of smoke, “It’s too early for that nonsense!”
But Aina was laughing loudly from the floor.
“You almost blasted my face off, Teo!”
Teo Matgan rolled his eyes as she sprang to her feet. She wasn’t short, but he stood nearly a foot and a half taller than she did.
“You’re ridiculous, Aina.”
She sat on a stool and spun to face him, grinning from ear to ear. “Buy me a drink.”
Minutes later, Aina was giggling into a mug of firebrandy larger than her head. “Let me get this straight. Someone hired you to kill a lady. You thought she was pretty, so you then proceeded to—”
“Sleep with her, yes.” He nodded with a fond memory in his eyes. “And then I didn’t want to kill her anymore.”
“I bet your boss wasn’t happy about that.”
“I don’t have a boss. He was just the man who hired me. But you’re right, he wasn’t pleased, so I killed him instead. The lady heard about it and paid me, said I’m a model citizen and I deserve to be compensated for my services. I don’t know if she meant the services with my gun or my—”
“Stop, stop, stop!” Aina nearly fell off the stool laughing. The men playing cards in the corner glared at her, so she lowered her voice when she next spoke. “I don’t want to think about your little gun!”
“Aina is blushing; it’s a miracle.” Teo shook his head. She could see why so many people found him attractive: He was nineteen years old with clear, golden-brown skin, wavy dark hair that curled in at his sharp jaw, and eyes like copper glinting in the sun. Though he’d been born in Sumerand, his parents had emigrated here from Linash shortly before he was born. Sometimes he used random Linasian words in conversation, or took on his parents’ accent in a way that made most girls line up to date him. If only they knew how many guns were concealed under his jacket. “And who said it was little?”
She hid her laughter behind the mug. “I’ve heard rumors.”
“Rumors, huh?” He shot her a teasing wink. “Are you taking my lovely partners for yourself once I’ve been with them? You’d have liked her; she was quite pretty.”
With another blush, she swatted at him, sloshing her drink over the rim of the mug. As she took another swig, a little creature slinking along the counter caught her eye. Pushing backward so her stool squeaked loudly across the floor, Aina pointed at the spider.
“Kill it, Teo. Please kill it.”
A grin spreading on his face, Teo focused on the spider for a moment, then lifted his eyes to meet hers.
“I still can’t believe,” he began, in a low, enigmatic tone, “that Aina Solís, the greatest assassin in all the world, is afraid of spiders.”
She was used to people teasing her about her ridiculous fear. If that spider had a heartbeat, or flesh and bones, all it would take was some force and a well-placed slash with her knife. But instead, it crept along, its legs itching at her skin when she couldn’t even see it.… She shivered involuntarily.
“Not the whole world,” she conceded, her eyes sticking to the spider as it progressed along the counter. “Just Kosín, maybe Sumerand. Kill it, already! Stop laughing at me!”