They turned down the next street and stopped in their tracks at the mouth of the road. Three bodies lay on the dirt road, their throats slit. The rust scent of blood choked the air. The wood-slab door of a nearby home swung open in the summer breeze with an eerie creak.
“More dead,” Tannis said. “Bautix is having the Jackals kill anyone who doesn’t want to work with them.”
They took another road, the silver and red moons lighting the path ahead of them toward the eastern shore of the Minos River that circled the city. The whole way, Aina thought of Bautix’s threat, his challenging smirk, the violence growing closer to the Dom every day—and it made her more determined to fight back.
When they were a few streets away from the Dom, Tannis pulled a crinkled piece of paper from her pocket. “For the past week, I’ve been spying on some Jackals who were giving letters to a janitor who works at the Tower. I cornered him earlier today and got this.”
Aina took the note and read quickly. It didn’t make much sense—it listed measurements and coordinates she didn’t understand. But that wasn’t what made her heart beat faster and her hands grow so clammy, she almost dropped the note.
“This is in Kohl’s handwriting.” She said the words softly, not sure how much this mattered. All the threatening notes that had been left in front of her employees throughout the city had been in varying handwriting she didn’t recognize, like the one she’d seen earlier tonight. But something about this note was important, if Kohl had written it himself.
“Where’s the janitor?” Aina asked, and Tannis raised an eyebrow. “You killed him, then. Did he give you any information before you did?”
Tannis gave a half-shrug, half-nod. “He couldn’t read, so he didn’t know what any of the previous letters said. The Jackals gave them to him to deliver to the Tower, but he didn’t hand them off to any one person. He would leave them tied to the legs of a bench in the courtyard, or in cracks in the wall. The Jackals told him where to put them each time. Whatever is going on, it’s clear there’s a traitor in the Tower. Probably more than one. They could easily help Bautix find a way in when he decides to attack.”
“If he attacks the Tower, he’ll kill the rest of the Sentinel and rule by himself.” The words made goose bumps rise on Aina’s arms. “It will be a bloodbath. We won’t only have Kohl to worry about anymore.”
Neither of them said anything for a few minutes. The wind blew the scent of the river toward them, and the sound of crickets chirping reached her ears. Maybe Kohl wanted the Dom for himself, but Bautix would destroy it if the people inside weren’t aligned with him. She gulped, suddenly wanting to run back home and check that it was still there.
“I don’t care what happens to the Sentinel, though,” Tannis said, her voice as quiet as the steady flow of the river nearby. “The Steels think Kaiyanis people are dirt in this country. They think we’re all killers and thieves—” Catching Aina’s raised eyebrow, she clarified, “Okay, I’m a killer, and Mirran is a thief, but most Kaiyanis aren’t. I grew up in a fishing village. Just a lot of poverty and slavery there.”
Aina bit her lip while she considered a response. This was the most Tannis had ever said about her past at once, and she was already shutting down—shuttering the emotion on her face, staring straight ahead again. The moonlight brightened Tannis’s hair and glinted off the throwing stars and pistols she wore, so she looked ethereal, like some kind of lethal fairy, and Aina caught herself staring—she’d always found Tannis pretty.
“We’ve worked together for six years, but we haven’t gotten to know each other that well,” Aina finally said. “I was afraid to show loyalty to anyone but him, and you didn’t want to trust a single soul. And we both know that when working with Kohl, you get used to hiding things.”
When Tannis looked back at her, her gold eyes were bright and cautious, and she clenched her jaw. If there was anyone else who could understand what working with Kohl was like, it was Tannis.
“When I was twelve,” Aina continued, “I thanked him for bringing me to the Dom. Every time I made a mistake after that, he reminded me he could put me back on the streets whenever he wanted. Any weakness you reveal, he uses it to manipulate you, so you try to keep as much of yourself a secret as you can.” She drew in a quick breath, her hands trembling a little as she dug them into her pockets. “But we shouldn’t have to do that with each other. You had to find your own way to Sumerand as a child, didn’t you?”
“I’ve always told people I smuggled myself onto a ship to come here as a child, but that’s a lie,” Tannis murmured, and when she spoke next, her words tumbled out like she’d been holding them in so long, they all needed to come out at once. “The day I was born, my father fell off a ladder at work and broke a leg. On my first birthday, he caught a plague sweeping down the eastern coast. He healed from that, but could still hardly work with his damaged leg. We starved a little more every year. On my fourth birthday, he fell ill to the same plague and died a few days later.” She let out a laugh of disbelief. “My mother grew very … paranoid. She convinced herself it was my fault he died and my fault we were so poor. She thought of me as a plague.” Her lips and voice shook as she forced out the next words, blue hair shrouding half her face from view. “When I was eight, she sold me to a slaver taking children to Kosín. I worked in the kitchen of a casino. Maybe a few months later, maybe a year, I don’t know, I’d starved myself enough to slip through the bars on my room’s window. I jumped from the third floor. It was winter, and the snow broke my fall. When I landed outside at the back door of the kitchens, I saw that the man guarding us had fallen asleep. I could have taken his keys. I could have saved more of the people they’d brought over. But I was a coward. I ran and left them there.”
Aina felt a pang in her heart at those words and stepped closer to Tannis. She imagined herself as a child, running whenever someone else on the streets approached her even if they might have been able to help. Running from the scene of her parents’ murder while their bodies were discarded.
“That’s when you joined the Vultures?” Aina asked. “And then worked with Kohl?”
Tannis nodded. “When I was fifteen, I vowed to go back and break out anyone that I could. One day, I heard of a father and daughter. The father was a Sacoren; he’d lived here almost his whole life before he and his daughter were caught and made house servants for a rich Diamond Guard captain in Rose Court.”
Aina nodded, the old stories coming back to her. “They used to offer captured Inosen either death, prison, or indenture that never really ends. So he offered himself and his daughter?”
“Yes, that’s what he did. He never had his diamonds removed, and he and his daughter could live together in the house of that captain. But years after the war, they were still stuck there. I helped them escape, but the daughter was shot and killed in the process. After the father got settled in a new home, he met with me and said I could always come to him for help. And he said that if war ever strikes again, he would use his powers in the way Verrain had, the way he wished he had used them against the Diamond Guard when his daughter was killed. There was nothing he could do for her once the bullet hit her brain, but he still wished he’d fought back instead of ran.” She sighed and met Aina’s eyes. “Everyone in this city owes someone something, don’t they? We’re all running from some kind of guilt, trying to make up for it with deals and promises. But I don’t see a point in fighting for the past anymore. The Dom is my home and my future. And if that means you want me to introduce you to this Sacoren, I will.”