She would keep this home she’d fought for and finally get his voice out of her head.
Soon, they’d face each other again, and this time, she’d win for good.
2
Night had settled in by the time they finished emptying the dead girl’s pockets.
“You’re very popular,” Teo muttered to Aina while fishing through Davide’s pockets next. “Even more people are trying to kill you than usual.”
“I just hope the next person will wait until I’ve had a nap.”
As she wiped off her bloodied knife with her scarf, she scanned every building for a sign of someone watching. A plastic bag swept by, caught in the wind, but that was the only sound besides her breathing and Teo’s movements. Many shop owners had decided it was safer to hide at night, bolting their doors shut and boarding up windows. Homes were quiet, families drawn in for the night. They already starved every day, and now Kohl and Bautix’s fight for the city robbed them of the chance to work and feed themselves. She gripped her knife harder, knuckles straining.
“There,” Teo whispered, his copper eyes glinting under the streetlamp as he looked up at her. “Almost looks like they had some bad luck in a mugging.”
“Common enough in the Stacks,” she said, flashing Teo a tense grin. “But I want Arman to know it was me. It’s the only way he’ll get in line.”
He passed Aina half of the kors, which she pocketed, the satisfying clink of metal in her pocket reminding her she was safe and wouldn’t be back on the streets anytime soon—she had more money than she’d ever had before, and she was still one of the deadliest people walking around Kosín.
Leaving the body behind, they rounded a corner and began to walk up a hill out of the Stacks, their boots crunching in the dirt on the narrow road. They kept their eyes peeled for any sign of danger, checking every alley they passed, their weapons on clear display. A few weeks ago, they could have passed through the Stacks without needing to be so on guard. Everyone knew who they were and not to mess with them.
But now, everyone feared the Jackals as much as they might fear her. Anyone in the Stacks would give up information on her if it could buy them protection from violence or extortion by the Jackals, whose ranks seemed to multiply by the day.
“The other tradehouses will trust you soon enough, once they realize you and Tannis are much better than Kohl,” Teo said as they rounded a corner and descended a hill deeper into the Stacks. His voice had gone bitter, and in it she sensed the memory of how Kohl and Bautix’s plans had gotten his mother killed by the Diamond Guards. But it vanished as quickly as it came, his eyes hardening as he said, “We can still stop them if we work fast enough.”
They both looked southeast then, and Aina felt the familiar tension rising, the sense that they were scrambling and would fail if they made one mistake or fell one step behind Kohl and Bautix. Dirt roads and run-down homes spread away before her, each one as familiar to her as the scars and bruises littering her body. The cloying, polluted air clung to her skin and slowly poisoned her lungs, but she would never trade it for the glittering, clean streets in other parts of the city. She imagined the Dom waiting for her at the river shore like it always had—as long as she could hold on to it.
It was the first tradehouse, started by Kohl in the wake of the civil war fourteen years ago, and now whoever ran the Dom managed all the tradehouses—they each paid commission to the boss of the Dom and got all their bribes and weapons through the Dom’s careful negotiations. Since she was twelve, she’d trained there to learn to fight and protect herself, to reach for a future that would never be offered to her, like everyone in the south yearned to do. If she lost it, she’d have nothing.
They soon reached the tavern in the middle of the Stacks that Raurie’s uncle owned. When they entered, smoke billowed out at them and Aina blinked, her eyes watering. Raurie, her uncle, and another employee took orders and prepared drinks at the bar. Since it had been so long since the civil war, most of the drunk patrons here wouldn’t notice the small signs that the bar was run by Inosen—people faithful to the Mothers, the two goddesses the people of Sumerand traditionally believed in; the religion now banned since the end of the war where Inosen and Steels fought one another.
But Aina had been coming here long enough to see it: the red and silver curtains leading to the backrooms, the Mothers’ colors; the names of their specialty drinks on the chalkboard menu that used words from the old holy language; the small drawing of a diamond, the Inosen’s tool for blood magic, on the back of a notebook where they wrote tabs. It was a bold risk; if anyone else noticed and reported them to the Diamond Guards, they could easily be imprisoned.
As she and Teo weaved through the tables, she coughed on the stale scents of smoke and cheap firebrandy. With so many people gathered here in close quarters, the air grew hot, sticky, and hard to breathe. Most people skirted out of their way, recognizing Aina and Teo even while inebriated. She stared straight ahead as they walked, hoping no sign of fear showed on her face—that she was as formidable a leader as Kohl had been.
Someone waved to them through the press of people. Tannis and Ryuu sat in a booth in a tucked away corner, a small candle on the table illuminating their faces and the mugs of ale they each held. Tannis twirled her glass between her hands, her gold eyes calculating as Aina and Teo joined them. Throwing stars glinted at the holsters on Tannis’s shoulders, and the candlelight made her blue hair more vibrant against her pale skin.
It was still odd to see Tannis among her friends when she’d pretended to work against them for so long, while fighting Kohl in her own way. But it had been easy to forgive her, when they’d both come from nothing and had fought their way to the top of Kohl’s ranks. Now they ran the Dom together. “I don’t like leaving the Dom alone too long,” Tannis said, shifting her weight uneasily, then looked at Aina and Teo. “Did you learn anything at the black market?”
“We managed to pick up some new weapons, but no, we didn’t find out anything about where Kohl might be,” she said, meeting Tannis’s apprehensive gaze. No one knew Kohl better than the two of them, nor how ugly things would get when he fought them for control of the Dom. “A spy from Thunder overheard us—and she had backup, Arman’s second. They’re not a problem anymore.”
Silence fell at their table, and Aina’s eyes darted toward the crowd to check for eavesdroppers. Even here, where alcohol flowed freely and everyone seemed relaxed enough, there was a marked change; people stayed in their groups, veering away from anyone they didn’t know, eyes flicking worriedly to the door as if they expected Jackals to break it down and start shooting at any moment.
“They’re testing us to see if we’ll punish them or if we’ll let them do whatever they want,” Tannis said then, drawing Aina’s attention back to the group. “Kohl wouldn’t let them get away with this.”
“We won’t either,” Aina said shortly. Two years ago, a tradehouse boss had gone around to the others and tried to get their support to take down Kohl. She’d been in the office when he found out about it; he’d gone deathly still, asked her to leave. The next day, that boss’s head and arms were found floating in the river—no one ever found the rest of him.