The river’s stench seemed to follow them as they walked north, clinging to their clothes and hair. Since it was still early, the heat hadn’t risen yet, but the air was thick with humidity. On days like this, people in the Stacks usually spent more time inside, but today there were even fewer people on the streets than usual. Aina squinted against the bright sunlight, peering down each road they passed for some sign of people, but there was a particularly deadened tone to her part of the city today.
Her gaze turned in the direction of the Dom as they walked. She couldn’t see it from here, with miles of homes between the eastern and western shores of the river, but she imagined it standing charred under the sun.
The few people who were outside gave her and Kohl a wide berth when they walked by, and in the scurries between the people stepping back and closing their doors, she caught whispers.
“My sister lives there, she said they used Verrain’s blood magic to set the place on fire,” a woman said to her neighbor, while they both hung out of their windows. When Aina shot them a sharp glance, they nearly jumped out of their skin and ducked under their windows.
Though Aina kept one hand on a knife and glared at anyone who whispered something similar, the hair rose on the back of her neck, and she began to sweat not only from the heat, but from nerves. The news about the fire had spread, but what she hadn’t expected was that people had caught wind of Raurie using blood magic during the fire. They didn’t have the details right, but they knew Verrain’s form of the Mothers’ magic was back—and they seemed to think that Inosen had caused the fire, when that wasn’t even something the magic could do. The Inosen had no reason to attack the Dom. It made no sense, but if those were the rumors spreading, then that would mean nothing good for the Inosen.
She watched Kohl out of the corner of her eye, wondering if he’d overheard that the Inosen were involved, but he didn’t look at her again until they reached the Center.
“See this?” he whispered, pointing to the windowsill of a bakery a block north of the train station.
“What? Dirt?”
He shook his head sharply and walked to the windowsill, beckoning her so they both stood in the shade beneath the shop’s awning.
“I know you were a child in the last war,” he said under his breath, so low she had to lean forward to hear. “But I was old enough to remember. Whenever my old boss had me deliver messages and weapons to the fighters on the side of the Steels, this marking was always nearby, to show their allegiance.”
Kohl jabbed his finger at a small etching on the windowsill, and though Aina didn’t know what it meant, she’d gotten chills at Kohl’s words.
“It’s a pickaxe, isn’t it?” She frowned. “Like on Sumerand’s seal.”
“That’s what it looks like, doesn’t it? The sword and pickaxe are everywhere, so it’s inconspicuous. But this is an arc, the Mothers’ symbol, with a slash through it. It’s a sign of those who blame the Inosen for the war, no matter if they fought for Verrain or were innocent. You know how Inosen will leave markings on their dead, or on themselves to indicate if a business or home is safe for Inosen?”
Aina nodded, thinking of all the small signs she’d seen at Raurie’s uncle’s tavern, and a pit of dread opened in her stomach. “This is a direct threat to the Inosen.”
“And a sign of support for Bautix,” he said, then added, “He gains more support every day that he causes chaos and blames it on someone else. If he kills the Sentinel today, his followers will rally behind him to lead.”
Without another word, he moved back into the crowd and she hurried to catch up. Soon they reached Rose Court, and it was much hotter up here; the sun beat off the pavement in waves that caused the lights and windows to shimmer and glitter. Tourists crowded the streets so Aina and Kohl walked one at a time along the shop fronts. The tone here was remarkably different than the south; people shopped without a care, laughing and gossiping along the clean cobblestone streets, leaning on fountains with bowls of melting sweet ice in their hands. None of their houses or inns had been flooded or burned down last night.
Between all the bobbing heads, she caught snatches of the harbor and its luxury boats ahead, and with a twinge of unease, she realized the intelligence of Bautix’s plan. First he attacked the south, farthest from the people here. Instead of working his way up through the other districts, his next attack would be right in the heart of one of the richest areas of the city; none of them cared about the Stacks, so they would never see it coming—especially not the Sentinel.
Halfway down the main road, Kohl’s hand wrapped around her elbow and tugged her to a stop. “Do you remember years ago when we robbed one of these ships? Mirran did the actual stealing, we waited as backup on the docks below, and when we killed those Diamond Guards, you got those four diamond-edged daggers you like to carry.”
“Yes,” she said immediately, shaking off his hand and continuing to walk. She hadn’t thought he would remember that night so clearly—how it had revealed how well they worked together, barely needing to say a word to understand what the other meant.
He stepped in front of her so she nearly walked right into him. Over his shoulders, she could make out the docks, the passengers embarking or disembarking from planks leading up to ships, and the guards scattered between each port.
“What was the most difficult part of that job?”
“It was easy enough for Mirran to get on the boat and steal from them,” she said, shrugging. “The hard part was the guards. Not the ones on the boat, they were useless, but the Diamond Guards they called over.”
He nodded. “Getting onto the boat will be easy. It’s the aftermath we have to worry about. We’ll need a distraction to lure away the guards and a boat to leave on.”
“Good, you take care of that,” she said, and when he raised an eyebrow, she added, “When we started this partnership, you said I would take care of the dirty work so they wouldn’t catch you being a double-crosser. So you stay out of the way, and I’ll take out the Jackals and hopefully Fayes himself too. Agreed?”
He stared at her for a long moment, a slight smirk tilting one side of his lips as if this were amusing to him. Then he nodded and swept out an arm, gesturing for her to go ahead.
“You are the boss of the tradehouses, after all,” he said in a low tone as she walked past him. “For now.”
Pretending she hadn’t heard him, Aina headed to the pier opposite the one with Fayes’s boat, while Kohl vanished into the crowd. Bobbing in the river, the boat was three stories high with an open top. The sleek white surface gleamed in the sun without a speck of dirt. Electric lamps and hanging lights shone in every window. She assumed the Jackals would hide on one of the lower levels until they got a signal to take out the Sentinel.
A ruckus on the shore caught her attention then—a large, onyx-and-gold decorated carriage broke apart the crowd, pulled by white horses with golden manes and led by an entourage of Diamond Guards with rifles slung across their chests.
She ran her fingers along the hilts of her knives, wondering how many Jackals she’d have to take out today. The Sentinel would surely bring Diamond Guards on board with them, as well. Fayes would know that, so he’d make sure the Jackals weren’t outnumbered.
She wished she’d had time to find her friends to help with this. But she’d faced worse odds before, and the anticipation of a fight filled her with adrenaline now. The four members of the Sentinel—Mariya Okubo, Clement Eirhart, Roberto Gotaro, and Petro Diaso—exited the carriage and approached the stairs leading up to the ship, surrounded by Diamond Guards on all sides. There was no sign of Kohl—only dazed tourists and jaded locals watching the Sentinel’s display of power.
“Welcome, friends!” a booming voice called out from the other side of the ship. Standing on her toes, Aina could make out the stocky figure of a blond, middle-aged man standing at the top of the ship’s steps. With his broad shoulders, wearing a jet-black Diamond Guard vest and the silver epaulettes worn by captains, he had to be Arin Fayes. Taking out one of Bautix’s top allies and ruining his plans today would just be the start of her revenge.
She scanned the pier quickly, searching for a way to get over there without drawing attention. If she didn’t make it there now, she’d be too late. Swimming would be the least noticeable way—and it was only about ten feet across—but then her clothes would be laden with water and it would be more difficult to move as quickly as she needed.
Something swayed in the corner of her vision. To her left, a long rope hung from the side of the ship closest to her, tied to a hook atop the next level.
Without a second thought, she grabbed it, took a few steps back, and ran.
Gripping the rope, she jumped and swung over the water. At the height of the arc, she let go.
She landed on the dock harder than she’d hoped, wincing as her knees hit the wooden surface. Rolling, she hid behind the side of the boat. The rope swung back to where she’d found it.
Footsteps sounded from the other side. Standing and withdrawing a knife, she peered around the edge and then jerked her head back. A guard approached with a gun drawn, his eyes searching the area for whatever had made so much noise.
Quieting her breaths, she let him get close, and right before he turned the corner, she stepped to the side and slammed her elbow back into his nose. Pivoting, she swept her knife across his throat, then pushed him into the waters of the harbor. His blood stained the wooden docks.
“Manet?” called a voice, probably using the name of the guard she’d killed. Flattening herself against the side of the ship, she waited for his fellow to turn the corner. His eyes widened when he saw her, but before his hand could reach his gun, she lunged forward and drove her blade into his heart. She kicked him off the end of the dock so he fell backward into the water, blood billowing into the sea around him.
Before making any other move, she checked her surroundings for anyone watching, then took in the situation on the side of the boat. The Sentinel and their guards were making their way up the narrow stairwell onto the ship. The last one to enter was Mariya Okubo, the only woman of the group and the one to whom Aina had revealed Bautix’s plans last month. Once she vanished into the interior, two guards took up posts at the bottom of the stairwell. With so much protection around the Sentinel, how exactly did Arin Fayes expect to kill them? She saw no other reason for him to have Jackals onboard if that wasn’t his plan.
A door stood open next to her, likely the one these two guards she’d killed had been watching. On the docks, someone in a crew uniform approached the door, carrying a bag with loaves of bread sticking out of the top.
As soon as he walked inside, Aina followed.
Silver sconces on the wooden walls lit the narrow hallway with a dim glow. The boat bobbed in the water, making it difficult to balance as she followed the crew member to the only door. She stepped into a kitchen, with one chef chopping vegetables on the far side and a few kitchen waitstaff donning aprons and stacking tiny sandwiches on a large plate. None of them had noticed her standing in the doorway. Ducking, she ran in a crouch toward the door on the other side, staying below the counters so they wouldn’t see her.
It was a storage room for cooking supplies and food, equally empty of Jackals as the kitchen had been. She darted through it and into the last room on the floor, where she found a collection of cots, probably for the crew to sleep in. The quiet of the ship unnerved her, the sound of her own breathing setting her on edge. Anything could be happening with Fayes and the Sentinel, and she’d have no idea. She strained her ears, hoping to catch some sign of Kohl’s distraction outside, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary yet.
A staircase running along the wall, with a wooden railing and burgundy carpeting, led to the second level of the ship. She approached it, the first step creaking under the weight of her boots. Peering upward, she took in what she could before moving onward—it was the main floor of the ship, a door open to the right with a sliver of blue sky visible. That must have been where the Sentinel had come in.
Staying on the balls of her feet and in the shadows, she ascended the staircase, trying to make as little noise as possible on the creaking steps.
The second floor was one open room with a large dining table, but none of the Sentinel were here. Voices came from the third floor—the deck—with a staircase leading up to it on the opposite side of the ship. Behind her, a door stood ajar, revealing an office with a large window. Empty.
Where on this goddess-damned ship are the Jackals?
The boat suddenly shifted, hard enough that she almost lost her balance. She gulped. If this thing started sailing farther along the river, she didn’t know how she’d get back. She knew the basics of swimming, but she’d never swum long distances before. The only solution was to work fast.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs behind her. Darting to the other side of the table, she crouched and hid behind its thick legs.
One of the waitstaff approached the door, and with a quick tug of the wires holding the staircase, withdrew it. It almost slammed into place in the doorway, but the waiter slowed it with his hand, easing it into place so it didn’t make a sound.
Right before it closed, Aina heard a shout from the dock—the Diamond Guards below. The waiter’s sleeve slipped slightly as he locked the door shut, revealing half of a tattoo: a Jackal’s snarling maw.
Before he could turn around, she leapt on top of the table, aimed her dagger and threw it into his throat. He made a strained choking sound as blood spilled freely, coating the clean white floor. She jumped off the table, then withdrew her dagger from his throat.
While dragging his blood-covered body to a corner, her mind raced. If the Jackals were all disguised as waitstaff, some were probably upstairs serving drinks. She couldn’t waste time with the Jackals still downstairs—she had to get to the ones above as well as Fayes himself.
She raced to the stairwell, but halfway up, a loud boom shook the boat. It tilted sharply to one side and Aina slammed into the nearest wall, wincing as pain shot up her arm.
As the boat settled back in place, she looked over her shoulder and through the window of the office. A fire blazed on the docks with smoke billowing up from the carriage the Sentinel had arrived in. The horses that had been tethered to the front broke off, raising their front legs and squealing in panic as they tried to get away from the fire. People on the docks scattered, shouts rising up.
She let out a small laugh under her breath. Kohl’s distractions were certainly effective. Without wasting another moment, Aina ran to the top floor, then stopped where a wall curved around the edge to the open top. Holding her breath, she peered around it.
A round table was set out, the beechwood finish of it gleaming under the harsh sun. All four members of the Sentinel had risen from their seats, Diamond Guards close at hand and alert. The Jackal waitstaff had paused halfway through pouring champagne into crystal glasses, and one overflowed, falling and shattering on the floor. They all stared open-mouthed at the docks as flames and smoke rose from the Sentinel’s carriage.
Arin Fayes stood slightly back from the group, taking it all in—the fire he hadn’t expected, the Sentinel who now realized something was wrong, the Diamond Guards ready to shoot anything that moved—and then, with a nonchalant shrug, he snapped his fingers.
The Jackals all withdrew their guns at once, aiming them at the governors’ heads. The Diamond Guards drew their own weapons and a hush settled over the deck.
Aina flattened herself against the wall, keeping one eye on Arin Fayes as she loaded her blowgun with paralyzing poison darts. In quick succession, she blew into the gun, firing darts into arteries on the sides of the Jackals’ necks. They dropped to the ground in seconds, and she stepped out from behind the wall.
The Diamond Guards turned their guns on her, and she rolled her eyes.
“Are you serious? I just did your job for you!”
A gunshot broke the tense silence, and Aina ducked, thinking Fayes had pulled out a weapon—but then she saw Gotaro, one of the Sentinel, fall backward with blood spilling from his temple.
“Get them downstairs and someone re-anchor the boat before we’re stuck in the middle of the river,” Aina hissed at the Diamond Guards still shielding the other Sentinel governors.
They paused for a moment, staring at her incredulously until Mariya Okubo barked at them, “Move already!”
Crouching, half the Diamond Guards circled the three surviving Sentinel governors and moved with them toward the stairs leading to the main floor. She really hoped one of them managed to stop the boat from floating out any farther. The docks were at least twenty feet away now. Panic lodged in her throat, but she didn’t have time to think about it—the Jackals would arise from their paralysis in a couple of minutes, and there was still Arin Fayes to deal with.
“Things didn’t exactly go to plan today, did they?” she asked, approaching him slowly.
He took her in with hazel eyes hardened by years of fighting, and she knew he was judging how much of an opponent she would be—she only gave him a second, then stepped forward with her dagger drawn. Feinting to the right, she struck toward the left, but he blocked her blade with a dagger that appeared in his hand in the blink of an eye.
Straining against the force of his weight, her boots began to slide along the slick surface of the dock. Bending her knees to get more purchase, she pressed forward, trying to force him back.
Suddenly, the night with Kohl, Tannis, and Mirran robbing a similar ship came back to her. When a Diamond Guard had held a knife to Mirran’s throat, Kohl had distracted him so Aina could move behind him and deal a killing blow.
She didn’t need his help now to win.
With a grunt, she pushed Fayes back so he slammed into the railing. Her knife had gotten caught on one of the buttons of his vest and it tore off, leaving strands of black thread behind. The button clinked across the smooth white deck and a folded piece of paper fell out of its back.
Just then, she noticed the rest of his buttons: the stitching around them was odd, as if someone unskilled had taken them off and then hastily sewed them back on.
And then it hit her: the notes the Jackals were passing to Fayes to plot secret entrances into the Tower.
Fayes struck her with a punch to the gut that forced her backward and knocked the air out of her. She rolled toward him on the deck with her knife drawn, plunged it into his ankle and then ripped it out. When he shouted in pain, she pinned him to the ground.
Her blade met his throat. “Give me your vest.”
Struggling with her pinning him down, he shrugged out of the vest. Once it was off, she kicked it aside so he couldn’t reach it, then bent over him again with her knife. But then, a bullet pinged off the railing and froze her in place.
Her eyes flicked toward the direction of the gunshot, and she spotted the sniper. On the top floor of the boat at the next port, the one Aina had come from, Bautix himself stood with a pistol drawn and a smirk on his face. He aimed his gun at her. She was close enough to Fayes, though, that he couldn’t shoot without risking hitting his partner.
A surge of fury rose up in her at the sight of him, utterly fearless and unrepentant as he waited for any chance to shoot her too. The man who’d given the order to kill her parents, whose laws had killed and imprisoned the poor and the Inosen for years; the man who’d burned down the Dom.
Just wait, she thought, meeting his eyes. You have no idea what’s coming for you.
Then she shrugged, as if admitting that he had the upper hand here. In one quick movement, she abandoned Fayes, grabbed the vest, and threw herself toward the stairwell as another bullet flew over her head.
But before she disappeared down the steps, she uncorked the fatal poison she kept in her pouch and rolled it along the deck. It landed next to one of the Jackals. Arin Fayes had slumped down next to the railing, trying to staunch the flow of blood at his ankle.
That would soon be the least of his problems.
Closing the door to the deck so none of the poison’s fumes would reach them, she went halfway down the stairs and peered through a window at the other ship, then swore. Bautix was already gone from the deck.
Running down the last of the steps, she drew up short when she spotted the Sentinel and Diamond Guards gathered on the main floor. A crew member stood at the wheel, steering them back to shore, with a Diamond Guard aiming a gun at his head to get the job done faster.
Maybe she’d saved the three remaining governors’ lives, but she didn’t trust them not to turn on her or somehow blame her for what had happened. She had to get off this ship before any of them noticed her. Two of the windows on the opposite side of the boat were open, with just enough space that she might be able to squeeze through.
While the Diamond Guards were busy, she darted across the room to the windows, pausing once to glance back at the Sentinel. Mariya spotted her, her jaw tightening as she and Aina briefly locked eyes—like she was confused why Aina had bothered to save her. After rolling Fayes’s vest into a ball with the buttons inward to protect the notes and then stuffing the vest under her shirt, Aina hauled herself through the window, held her breath, and dropped into the water with a loud splash.
It was cold even in the summer, and she fought hard against the weight of her clothes and weapons pulling her underneath. She broke the surface, gasping for breath and shoving wet strands of hair out of her face. The waves caused by the boat pushed her forward, and she almost slammed into one of the poles holding up the docks. She had to wrap herself around it not to get dragged back out into the water.
She took deep breaths, spitting the water out of her mouth, and watched as Fayes’s boat re-docked. Her eyes flicked to the top floor, where his figure slumped against the railing—he hadn’t moved at all, and none of the Jackals were standing either.
Dust still billowed along the docks from the explosion, with people running and shouting in different directions, Kohl’s distraction providing plenty of chaos. Her hands tightened around the pole, breaking off bits of wood with her fingers. Bautix would have already disappeared into the fray.
“Aina,” a voice said behind her, and she nearly fell off the pole.
Kohl was there, on a small boat he’d procured from Mothers-knew-where. He held out his hand to pull her up, and once she was on the boat, they sailed away around the northern edge of the city.
“Bautix killed Gotaro,” she said under her breath as the docks disappeared from sight.
There was a small pause from Kohl. And then he said, “He’s started a war.”