“Why?” Raurie asked in a soft voice, as if Bautix might hear them through the walls. “He’s been on the side of the Steels from the beginning. He is one. What does he gain from killing them?”

“Everything,” Aina said. “Ryuu, wasn’t your family wealthy before they even began mining diamonds? That’s not what their original fortune came from, right?”

“That’s true,” he said with a slow nod. “My great-grandparents first got rich by selling mining tools, and then my grandparents finally bought the mines.”

“That’s how you make money, right? Sell the tools, the thing that makes the rest of the country work, and get paid for it. General Bautix used to run the arms manufacturing in the city. He basically had a monopoly on it until he gave it up to become the general. But what if he never really gave it up? Most of the city’s arms sales still go through just a couple of places. There are only a few smugglers who manage to get in more and sell them, but Bautix keeps the Diamond Guards on top of that, probably to prevent as much competition as possible. What if he’s still earning money from his old business and hiding the profits somehow? And if so, what better way for an arms dealer to make money than to make other people want to kill each other?”

The more she thought about it, the angrier she became, and she slammed her fist on the bed. “Now he’s the one who pays the Diamond Guards, so they’re loyal to him, and the Sentinel has grown to rely on him to protect the city from conflict, so no one would think to blame him. But he’s the one who stirs the conflict. He’s basically tricked the entire city into paying him for weapons to fight, and then paying him again to end the fighting so he looks like a hero. When one conflict ends, another one springs up. Teo, what’s one thing you never ask when you’re paid to kill someone?”

“Why they want the target dead,” Teo answered mechanically.

“Exactly,” Aina said as Ryuu grimaced. “But what if their goal isn’t to kill the target? It’s not about who gets killed, it’s about who gets blamed. You always let someone else take the blame when you can. It’s a sort of backup plan to keep you safe.”

Silence settled through the room as her words sank in. Her stomach tightened as she recalled what Kohl had told her years ago: Blame the person who bought the bullets and told the gun where to point.

With a deep breath, she continued, “Publicly, Bautix sends the Diamond Guards to kill Inosen. In secret, he puts hired men to the task of killing Steels—and most of them probably purchased his guns to do their jobs—and then pins the blame on people like me. Why do you think he wanted so badly for someone to turn me in and pulled that sob story about being friends with Ryuu’s parents? So that he could garner sympathy, then pinpoint an enemy, someone for the other Steels to hate and fear. I was the perfect scapegoat. That’s what he did with killing your parents, made it look like it was because of the Inosen attacking the mines. He wanted to stir up trouble. I don’t know how much Kohl knows about it, but I bet Bautix wasn’t happy that Kouta survived, so he kept up the hunt for me and put pressure on Kohl to get the job done.” After she let her words sink in for a moment, she asked, “Ryuu, how did Kouta get this folder?”