The next morning in the safe house in the mines, the quiet was nearly unbearable to Aina. Her ears still rang from the explosions. Her body ached, but her mind was alert. She hadn’t gotten much sleep, since every time she closed her eyes, she only saw fire and destruction. It brought her back to the night of the fire at the Dom. Bautix kept spreading his attacks wider and wider, destroying every home she knew. The city still stood, smoldering and gasping for breath, but for how long?
She had to go back to the city and make him pay.
But first, she’d wait for Ryuu to return to make sure the Inosen had everything they needed. The place had dusty crates stacked along the walls, likely having been an underground storage unit for the mines before it was turned into a safe house during the old war. Cots lined the walls and a few small tables stood around the open space. On one of the tables was a tiny statue of the Mothers, covered in dust. The chipped paint made it hard to see details, but she noted their long hair, Isar’s harp held across her chest and Kalaan’s bow and arrows slung over her back.
A wooden door was at the back of the safe house, leading deeper into the mines, while the exit was up a flight of stairs on the opposite side. Luckily, the safe house had been unlocked when they’d come last night, and so the Inosen had been able to tend to injuries immediately while waiting for Ryuu to bring food and supplies. Raurie had helped, but she didn’t touch any diamonds while she worked. Tannis had assisted her by passing her bandages and alcohol to clean wounds.
Aina felt much closer to the Inosen now, closer to the memory of her parents and who she’d been when she was younger. A lump built in her throat as she counted how few of them were left. Those who’d been sent to retrieve the Inosen from other safe houses hadn’t been very successful; only about half had managed to save anyone at all.
Lill had avoided speaking to anyone after learning of her father’s death, and sat in the corner across from Aina and Teo, her hair and face coated in ash, her eyes as blank as those of the dead they’d left behind. Every time Aina had woken during the night, she hadn’t seen either of them sleeping. Now, Teo watched Lill for a long moment, and when he turned to Aina, she was surprised to see tears in his eyes. After his mother’s death, she’d only seen him cry once—at the very scene of it. Her heart ached as she wondered how much of it he kept shut inside. She reached out, intending to comfort him, but then he stood.
“I’m going to check on my apartment and see if I can find any more Inosen,” he said in a clear voice as he blinked those few tears away. “Will you be fine here?”
She nodded, and he left a moment later, passing Ryuu on his way out. Ryuu entered along with a couple of maids from his mansion, all three of them carrying baskets of supplies and food. The scent of roasted meat and fresh fruit reached Aina, and her stomach rumbled, but she would wait for the Inosen to eat before taking any for herself. After they settled the baskets on a cot in the center of the room, Ryuu looked at Lill, a worried crease forming on his forehead, and then walked toward Aina.
“Raurie told me you suggested they all come here,” he said. “Thank you for that.”
“Of course.” She smiled at him. “It’s the best place for them to be, for now. And I know you’d invite them to stay in the main house if we could trust your neighbors. Maybe the Dom’s employees will stay there, though. We’ve already crowded the Inosen enough.”
“And what about you? I know you haven’t really rested.”
She shrugged, fending off any thoughts of sleep. “I’m fine. I’m more worried about the Inosen.”
At the same time, they looked toward Lill, who sat with her knees pulled up to her chest. In a whisper, Ryuu asked, “Has she spoken to anyone yet? She should eat something, at least.”
When Aina shook her head, Ryuu sighed and then walked toward Lill. Aina didn’t want to eavesdrop, but their strained whispers carried across the room where everyone else was mostly quietly working.
“Lill,” Ryuu said, kneeling next to her. He leaned toward her as if to give her a hug, but stopped when she looked up at him, her eyes fierce despite the tears resting there. “This was all Bautix’s doing, but you’ll be safe here and—”
“Stop,” she breathed out, and Ryuu’s words halted abruptly. “I appreciate you opening the safe house to us and bringing us supplies, but you can’t fix everything, Ryuu. We’re not safe until Bautix is dead and people who don’t think like him are in power. That’s the only way this will be fixed: making them bleed as much as they do us. That’s what we learned this magic for, isn’t it?”
When she finished speaking, her eyes trailed toward the ceiling to stop her tears from falling. Ryuu paused for a beat, looking at the floor between them before saying, “On that train, I shot Kohl Pavel. The person who killed my brother, Lill. I know what the need for revenge feels like, and I know it fixes nothing. It might make you feel better for one moment, but all your old doubts and fears come back in the next. Don’t let the desire for revenge take you over, Lill.”
She tilted her head back down and tears tracked down the white ash still on her cheeks. Ryuu hugged her, his black bangs falling in his face.
Aina stood then and walked to the three recruits, who’d arrived shortly after she had last night, covered in soot. They all shared a cot now while they ate breakfast, Johana’s little fingers sticky with the juice of a mango. When Aina reached them, they all straightened and waited for her to speak.
Instead she bent down to give them each a long hug. “I’m glad you all made it back yesterday,” she said, her voice gruff. “Thank you for helping get everyone away from the bombings. Get as much rest as you need, all right?”
“Thank you,” Kushik and Markus mumbled, surprise lighting their eyes—they probably had never gotten much gratitude from Kohl when he was their boss.
“You get some rest too, boss,” Johana said, and Aina nodded but didn’t reply.
She left the safe house shortly after—the only way to solve any of their problems was to stop Bautix. She couldn’t do that from here, and certainly not by resting. Ryuu might have a point about revenge not fixing much, but as long as Bautix tried his best to kill them all, she’d keep fighting back.
She headed back to Kosín, breathing in the crisp scent of the forest around the mines, and knowing she would smell only death when she entered the city. Even after the downpour last night, a hint of smoke still hung in the air, growing sharper the closer she got.
An eerie quiet permeated the empty streets as she walked through the east of Kosín. Clouds partially obscured the sun, but whenever they moved, sunlight revealed the gruesome scene in stark detail. White ash coated entire streets like untouched snow while gray limbs and streaks of blood stood out among the rubble. Something wet touched her cheek and when she lifted a hand to it, she found more tears she hadn’t realized she’d shed. She’d seen a lot of death in her life, but nothing like this—nothing that showed such complete disrespect for life. She walked slowly, making sure she took in every broken body and fallen building, to breathe in the rancid air so she wouldn’t forget it. It was part of her, this city, whether it was whole and safe or burning and dead.
The civil war was the last time the city had been so quiet. Her parents had kept her inside and so she’d missed what had really been happening. But she’d seen their terror, had known things were bad even though she couldn’t see it herself. Now that she did, she knew she could let nothing stop her—not the fact that they’d failed to stop Bautix’s weapons shipment, and not these attacks that only made people afraid. All of this was a reason to not rest, to fight Bautix until he was nothing. Even if no one else joined her, she’d do whatever she could to stop him, whether that meant using the brute force she’d honed for years or the new blood magic at her fingertips. She’d prove what a girl from nothing could really do.
Before she realized where she was walking, she’d arrived at the edge of the Center square, opposite the train station. She let out a small sigh. Of course this was where she’d been going. It was the place to look out on the city and feel like she was some bigger part of it than she truly was. And if she wanted to see the damage done, this would be the best place.
But there was something odd strewn across the ground—bits of wood, arranged in a purposeful way. From the scent of smoke lingering on them, she guessed they were bits of buildings that had been blown apart in Bautix’s rampage. With a pit of dread building in her chest, she skirted around it and entered the train station.
It was empty, closed in the wake of the attacks, with ticket stands and platforms abandoned. Walking through here was like traversing the ruins of a silent, ancient city. Her breaths and footsteps were the only sounds as she made her way to the stairwell that would lead to the tower.
When she reached out to turn the doorknob, though, it opened from the inside with a creak. She bent her knees, a knife in one hand—but then Kohl stepped through the door.
“Aina,” he said, his voice tinged with relief, his bloodshot eyes widening. “You’re safe.” She’d stepped back slightly, trying to conceal her surprise at his reaction as her knife hand lowered to her side. “I saw you coming from the edge of the square. You have to see something.”
On leaden legs, she followed him up the stairs to the tower like she had countless times when he’d still owned the Dom. For the first time since then, she felt like they were actually working together; they were both appalled by what Bautix had done. She watched him from behind as they approached the window, midday light casting gold on his stoic features. The letters he’d left for her in her mother’s statue flowed through her thoughts now, and it was suddenly easy to believe he’d worried for her safety during the explosions; easy to believe he’d never stopped caring. She let out a low breath as he beckoned her forward, not knowing what to do with that knowledge but knowing that her heart ached at it, and that Teo’s words came back to her now: Because you still love Kohl.
She shook away the thought and coughed on the smoke as the outside air filled her lungs once more. Kohl pointed to the wooden beams arranged on the ground below.
There were hundreds of them, pilfered from the buildings that had burned, arranged in letters and words and a single sentence that sent a chill through her whole body:
Let it be known that our goal is to progress, not to regress.
Kohl let out a long, slow breath before speaking. “I watched as the Diamond Guards assembled this sentence, not caring at all who saw them. None of them tried to stop the fires or save anyone. They’re his.”
“How many?” Aina asked in a hollow voice.
“I counted ninety. Who knows how many more he hasn’t yet revealed?”
Aina shook her head slowly. “As long as he can convince people that there’s chaos without him, that the city would be safer if he were in charge, he’ll have supporters.”
Kohl let out a humorless laugh. “And that’s why he won’t ever completely destroy the Stacks. He needs to keep poor people around. He needs the people who are always trying to latch on to the closest thing resembling safety.”
She turned away from the scene to face Kohl. “He’s planning another shipment the day after tomorrow. He is one step ahead of us, as he proved by putting the fake shipment on that train, and now with these attacks. We can’t let him get any more ahead of us than he already is.”
Kohl turned back to the window and she noticed the edge of a bandage peeking through the neck of his shirt and covering the bullet wound on his shoulder. He rolled his shoulder back and grunted in pain, and Aina smirked a little. Ryuu had gotten in a good shot.
Kohl’s eyes trailed toward the Stacks then. The ghosts of flames danced in those eyes, and he went so still, she thought he’d stopped breathing.
“He tricked us. He must have found out our plan somehow and planted the decoy on our train while getting the real shipment in some other way, maybe on the train from the northwest port rather than the southwest.”
“Your friend Kerys can’t be trusted,” Aina added, crossing her arms. “She and Bautix are together, did you know? She’s been pretending to be on your side. How do you know she hasn’t told him about everything you’re planning?”
Kohl bit down on his lip as he gazed out at the city. “Because I’d be dead now if she had. Kerys always has her own plans going on—she doesn’t tell him everything.” Then, with a harsh sigh, he said, “The station is closed right now, but they’ll open it as soon as they can; they need to make money off the railroad they spent years building. I can find out what port Bautix is planning to send the next shipment from. He’s also planning to bring in more fighters to help him take over the Tower.”
“Good, but don’t tell her anything about it, just in case. The shipment isn’t the only thing we have to worry about. He’s planning to poison the Sentinel.”
“I’m aware,” he said suddenly, his hands gripping the edge of the windowsill so hard, his knuckles turned white—reminding her of how he’d dangled from the edge of the train, his hands the only thing hanging on. “None of the Jackals realized I was on the train that day, so Bautix doesn’t suspect me yet, but he’s still in hiding and only sends messages at random. This morning, he sent a Jackal to ask me to brew the poison for him. He’ll pretend to want to negotiate, but he’ll slip the Sentinel poison while his men come through the secret entrances to take the Tower. Can you brew the poison, and make antidotes as well by the day of the shipment?”
She nodded, her thoughts racing and the thrill of a new plan settling over her. “We’ll poison him instead. If he’s pretending to have a negotiation with them, he’ll have a drink of whatever he serves them so it won’t look suspicious. Convince him to put the poison in his cup too, and give him an antidote. But it will be fake. We’ll give the real antidote to the rest of the Sentinel, and Bautix can die in front of them while we stop his second weapons shipment from ever reaching the city. Turn his plan on its head. I’ll find a way to tell the Sentinel what’s happening.” Her eyes trailed north toward the Tower, and she considered Fayes’s notes, still tucked in her pocket. There’d only be one way into the Tower now—Fayes’s secret tunnels. She’d never imagined working with the Sentinel before, but if it would stop Bautix, she’d do it.
Kohl nodded, then one side of his lips tilted upward in a smirk. “The first time he tried to kill me, he did it with poison. Now? The last time we see each other, I want to use the same weapon. I can only hope I’ll get to watch him drink it.”
The words sent a chill down her spine. They would both do anything to get what they wanted, and even though she’d saved his life on the train, he would still come after her. So then, what did it matter, those notes he’d written, the relief in his eyes when he saw she was safe?
Will I still go after him? she wondered, and his hands tightened over the windowsill again as if to mock her.
Kohl met her eyes with a surprising softness in his own, and said, “I never thanked you for not letting me fall to my death on the train. For a moment, I really thought you would do it. Step on my hands, maybe. Slice through my fingers. Simply let me hang there until my grip slipped and you could laugh as I fell over the edge. For a long time, I thought that was what you wanted most of all.”
She swallowed hard, trying to keep her face clear of emotion. “You don’t know what I want, Kohl.”
As long as he still wanted the Dom, the plan was on; she couldn’t let him see that doubts and questions had sprung up in her thoughts. That was a weakness he might latch on to in order to win, and she could afford no weakness now.
But as she walked away, the letters from the horse came to the front of her thoughts again. He had weaknesses too. Tilting her head toward him so the sunlight hit her face, she unstuck her throat and asked, “You could have come after me in the Tower and killed me before I ruined Bautix’s plans last month, Kohl. Why didn’t you?”
A long pause passed before he answered, and she held her breath throughout it. His eyes flashed briefly with some emotion she couldn’t read. For a moment, she was certain he would ignore her.
“You’ve been an influence on my life since I was fourteen, Aina,” he said, his voice quiet as the ash falling on the city. “I fear knowing what my life would be like without that influence.”
As soon as his words trailed off, she turned away and walked down the stairs as fast as she could, not taking a full breath again until she reached the lobby of the train station.
So Kohl feared something, after all.
And maybe, when she’d saved him on the train, it was because she too feared knowing what her life would be like without him in it.