A dull thud sounded behind her, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the two in front of her. A moment later, Teo walked up next to her. The wind whipped his waves of dark brown hair around his jaw as he lifted his own gun and faced the other Thunder employee.
Aina’s thoughts raced, sweat trickling down the back of her neck. Against any other opponent, she would fight back without a second thought. Hesitation was a death sentence in Kosín.
But these were supposed to be her employees, and the thought of killing them left a bitter taste in her mouth. They were supposed to trust her, but maybe all their years working with Kohl had led them to trust no one but themselves. She couldn’t blame them, but she couldn’t let them get away with this. No real tradehouse leader would.
The spy began to circle away from the edge of the roof, and Aina followed. The night air crowded around them, heat and humidity making her clothes stick to her skin with sweat. A buzz rose in Aina’s ears, making all other sounds fall away, until the only thing left in the world was this fight on this rooftop.
“If you make one wrong move, Solís,” Davide called over, not taking his eyes off Teo, “I’ll blast your friend’s head off. Arman’s orders.”
Teo let out a sharp laugh. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Him, but not me?” Aina asked, wanting to keep them distracted. “I’m almost insulted, Davide. You don’t think I’m worth your bullets, or is your aim really so bad that you’d just miss?”
He took his eyes off Teo for a moment, an angry retort at the tip of his tongue, and Teo shot out his kneecaps. Davide collapsed, crying out, his strangled yell the only sound in the Stacks, apart from the rats moving in the street below.
The spy gulped then, her eyes wide and bloodshot as she and Aina continued circling each other. Aina made sure her own steps drew her closer to the edge of the building.
“Aina?” Teo called over, his voice casual as though this were a stroll through a park. “Do you need this traitor alive?”
“Keep him there,” she said. “I’ll only be a minute.”
Wind swept through the streets and the hair rose on the back of her neck. Her eyes flicked toward the three-story drop behind her.
Stay steady, she told herself.
Kohl had shown fear when she’d nearly pushed him out of a window last month and placed a blade under his heart. She would show none.
She crouched, angling her body so most of her weight was forward and under the shadow of the chimney. One hand moved to the brace of diamond-edged daggers across her chest, and the spy took the bait.
When she lunged forward, her eyes on Aina’s knives, Aina hooked a foot around the girl’s ankle and pushed.
The girl gasped, her eyes flicking down to see what had tripped her. Her arms windmilled, trying to grab on to something in the dark and failing. A small yelp left her lips but was swallowed by the wind, and a breath later, her body smacked against the ground three stories below. Aina spared her a brief moment of remorse, then turned to her second problem.
Davide’s shouts still echoed off the buildings around them, cursing at them in multiple languages as he bled out on the roof. Aina walked over to him and Teo, who stepped aside to let her face Davide herself.
“Arman’s orders,” she said in a mocking tone. “You’re forgetting one thing: I’m in charge.”
He barely opened his mouth to beg when she slit open his throat. She stepped back so his blood wouldn’t get on her boots, then moved toward the edge of the roof again. The girl’s broken body was surrounded by a pool of golden light from one of the last few streetlamps heading south. Kohl wasn’t Aina’s boss anymore, but she’d always survived by his lessons: Be brutal and exact. Get rid of anyone threatening your position. Cut off loose ends.
As much as she hated him, he’d ruled the tradehouses with a steel-tight grip. She was newer and younger, and needed to hold on even harder.
She tensed when Teo placed a hand on her shoulder, then forced herself to relax. He’s not Kohl, she reminded herself. Over the three years they’d known each other, Teo had stayed by her whenever she was injured or in danger, when Kohl kicked her out and the whole city wanted to kill her, before anyone feared or respected her.
His forehead creased in concern when he asked, “Which tradehouse were they from?”
“Thunder, like the other spies.” In the loud, smoke-filled room of the black market moments before catching sight of the spy, Aina had told Teo about the threatening notes left in front of her and her employees when they were out on jobs. They weren’t in Kohl’s handwriting, but she suspected he was sending the Jackals to do it for him, to shake her confidence for whenever he would really strike. “She saw us asking around about Kohl in the market, and she probably heard me tell you about the notes too. The other tradehouses are loyal to us now, but if Arman found out that Kohl is actively trying to take back the Dom, he’d turn against us in an instant and try to get the others to do the same. Right now, Arman is looking for any weaknesses he can find.”
“Traitors don’t deserve mercy,” Teo said, tilting his head toward the light of the silver moon, which lent a soft glow to his golden-brown skin. She breathed in, echoing his words in her head as he continued, “None of them do. Kohl, any of the tradehouses that want to challenge you, the Jackals working for Bautix, the Diamond Guards … We’ll show them we’re deadlier than all of them put together.” Their eyes met and she felt that same fire building in him, that need to fight all those who threatened them and the refusal to be beaten down. But there was something else too; his gaze seared through her, a silent reminder of how they’d grown closer this past month—and how he wanted more between them than she could give him while Kohl still lived.
Brushing loose strands of black hair behind her ears, she broke their eye contact and looked toward the body on the roof.
“Let’s leave them where Arman can find them,” she said. Together they lifted Davide’s body and carried it down the fire escape, the air growing quieter and pressing closer in the Stacks. Night deepened and the only other sounds besides their footsteps were the fleeting movements of rats and stray dogs on the dirt roads. But the faint sounds of voices, some threatening, some frightened, still reached them here from a few streets away.
Her limbs ached as she and Teo walked toward the body, and she knew she should rest, but any hour she slept was an hour in which Kohl could be moving against her.
“You know the Jackals are walking around the south like they own it all now,” she said. “Raurie’s uncle’s tavern is close, and she’s been eavesdropping on their conversations. Let’s see if she’s overheard something on where Kohl might be hiding.”
She would use all the lessons Kohl had taught her as an assassin to hunt him down. She’d lie, blackmail, steal, and trick—she’d make him suffer, because death alone wouldn’t be good enough. She’d kill, like she’d done many times while working for him, but this time, she’d kill him too.
A memory of Kohl pointing a gun at her head and then tossing it aside rushed to the front of her thoughts. The cold timbre of his voice every time he reminded her that he’d given her a home and could take it away whenever he wanted. The truth that he’d killed her parents, putting her on the streets in the first place. His fist delivering a blow to her face and then his fingers touching her hair softly.