1
“Don’t scream, and I might let you live.”
Aina removed her blade from the spy’s neck and spun her around so fast, the girl almost tripped. The spy flicked her gaze around the empty warehouse, to the shattered windows, to the main door twenty feet away, to the black market entrance where they’d both come from—and then to the dagger still in Aina’s hand.
“You won’t kill me,” the girl said, her voice shallow despite the bold words. “You need as many of us as you can hold on to.”
“Of what?” Aina scoffed. “Traitors?”
The word stung, a bitter poison on her tongue, but it was true. She and her colleague Tannis had fought to own all of Kosín’s tradehouses—businesses that supplied criminal services to any paying client—but the victory meant nothing when some of the tradehouses didn’t trust them and sent spies like this one.
“I’m just doing a job,” the spy said in a rush.
The words echoed in Aina’s mind. She’d given the same excuse countless times in her work as an assassin.
Aina’s old boss, Kohl, had killed her parents on a simple job.
“Everyone is just doing a job,” she spat out, making the spy wince, “but you, your boss, and everyone at the Thunder tradehouse is still a traitor.” While she spoke, Teo appeared at the entrance to the black market, his broad shoulders taking up the entire doorway. “Why did your boss send you to spy on me tonight?”
The spy bent her knees and shot away toward the exit. Aina flung a knife at her and it skimmed against the girl’s elbow, drawing blood but not stopping her. At the same time, Teo brought out a pistol and shot at the spy, but the bullet pinged off the side of the door as the spy ran outside.
Aina raced to the exit, Teo’s footsteps echoing off the floor behind her. The thick, humid summer air hit them when they left the warehouse, the heat rising off concrete in waves that made Aina’s breaths draw short. The towering gray factory buildings and textile mills cast sharp shadows along the street.
The spy was wrong about one thing: Aina would certainly kill her.
On top of the building across the street, movement flickered—the spy’s leg slipping over the edge and onto the roof.
Aina followed, leaping to grab the rungs of the fire escape and hauling herself up. By the time she reached the roof, the spy had run to the other side and jumped across the gap to the next building. Aina sprinted after her, crossing to the next building in a running leap. The spy cast one terrified glance over her shoulder and ran faster, leading Aina into the Center of the city and veering south into the Stacks—Aina’s home. Flashes of the silver and red crescent moons lit swathes of the rooftops from between the higher buildings around them.
Wind from the south blew in the river’s stench, but even with the humid summer air, a chill slid down her spine. Usually, the lights from shops lit up this part of the city all day and night, the owners never missing an opportunity to earn more kors. But the farther they ran, the fewer lights there were, flickering out around them until soon, they’d be plunged into the darkness of the Stacks.
Last month, Aina had exposed how General Alsane Bautix, a member of the Sentinel—the country’s governing oligarchy—was plotting an assassination against a foreign princess visiting the capital. He’d fled along with the Red Jackals gang and his biggest ally, Kohl. Desperate to regain power, Kohl and Bautix sent the Jackals to extort businesses in the south, killing anyone who refused to pay.
If she looked northward, there were electric lights, shops open at all hours, and Steels—wealthy industrialists—parading around in silk and diamonds. But the south was a sea of black, pinpricked by only a few candles in windows, and growing more invisible to the rest of the city every day. She tried not to imagine the bodies on the ground there now, left to rot after the Jackals had dealt with them.
The spy veered south, and Aina ran faster not to lose sight of her. The spy could easily disappear in the cobweb network of cardboard and rusted metal houses. Aina shifted left, hauling herself up to the fourth floor of another building. She sprinted across the roof until she was parallel with and above the spy, who glanced over her shoulder to check for pursuit. A small, triumphant smile lit her features when the red moon’s light touched her. Her pace slowed a little.
When Aina reached the end of the taller building’s roof, she looked behind her to see Teo a building away, then turned back to the edge of the roof and dropped off smoothly. A deep breath of smoke-tinged night air filled her as she fixed her gaze on the view. The hills wound downward, pockmarked by the gray-and-rust houses ahead, until they met the barely visible greenish tinge of the river at the southern docks.
A moment later, she rolled to her feet on the third-story roof of the building below, quieting her breaths even though she was still panting from the run. A small chimney stood sentinel at the edge of the roof and cast a shadow over one side. She ducked behind it as the other girl drew closer on a parallel path. Soon the spy would have to step onto the roof where Aina waited.
For a moment, Aina breathed in the still air, allowing the shadows to drape over her face. The dark didn’t scare her as much as it used to, but now it surrounded her and cloaked her in its depths as if to warn her that death was coming soon.
Kohl thrived in the dark. Aina stumbled through it, gasping for breath as clues slipped through her fingers like steam curling above a brass train.
Years ago, Kohl promised to give her a tradehouse of her own to manage one day. The hope that she’d have a real future had never been stronger, and now, her heart clenched at how foolishly she’d believed him. One mistake she’d made on a job last month, and he kicked her out, leaving her to be killed. She’d discovered his plans with Bautix, stopped them, and took the tradehouses for herself when he fled, but now he wanted them back.
The tradehouses were the only proof that her years on the streets after her parents’ deaths weren’t in vain. They were her success, her home, a sign of her ranking among the city’s criminals that left her untouchable. A sign that she’d never be on the streets again, her only solace the paper bags of glue she’d nearly suffocated on. Her hand went to her lips, checking for some remnant of glue, that old fear returning and never leaving—she inhaled now to remind herself she could still breathe. A spy wasn’t about to make her lose everything.
Still crouched behind the chimney, Aina held her breath as the spy reached this roof and approached. Her shadow stretched out before her, long and jagged on the concrete. Once she got close enough, Aina struck out with a punch to the gut. The girl exhaled sharply, falling back and doubling over as Aina stepped out in front of her. A snarl rose from the spy’s lips, and she pulled a knife from her sleeve. Its blade glinted in the moonlight as she lunged forward. Aina shifted to the side and used the girl’s own momentum to shove her away.
The spy’s feet skidded across the rooftop. Her eyes widened in fear when she nearly toppled off the edge, but she threw her arms to the side to catch her balance. At the same time, movement from behind Aina, still in the shadows of the building overhead, caught her eye. At first, she thought it was Teo, but then she heard the click of a gun.
Aina rolled out of the way in a single breath, then took a dagger in one hand and a scythe in the other. Her pulse raced as her second attacker stepped into the light: another Thunder employee, this one second-in-command to their boss, Arman—Davide, if she remembered correctly. He must have been watching to make sure their spy got away safely.