Most of the city still slept as she headed to her destination, tracing familiar paths up the Stacks’ dirt roads. Her boots slid on streets turned muddy from an overnight rain as she ascended the twisting hills that led to the rest of the city. She soon joined a throng of grim-faced workers headed to the factories, steel mills, and textile plants with their lunches in metal boxes. At a bend in the road that led to a main street lined with tailors, locksmiths, and repair shops, Aina slowed.

An elderly Sumeranian man sat in the shadowed doorway of his home, which was crumbling on one side. Blood dripped from a small cut on his pale arm onto a rough diamond he held between two grubby fingers. Her breath caught at the sight, and hazy memories came: her own parents praying to the Mothers, sneaking diamonds in their sleeves, drops of blood falling on the dirt floor.

Loud voices sounded from the top of the upward curving road. Two Diamond Guards appeared at the bend, talking casually to each other, and began walking down the hill. She imagined them spotting the man, yanking him by the neck with their nail-studded leashes, dragging him to a more public place where they would execute him.

“Hey!” she hissed to the old man, who ignored her.

Like her parents had, he practiced his faith without a shred of fear. Her heart ached when the Diamond Guards punished the faithful—the Inosen—since they had done nothing wrong. But she would run and save herself if any trouble started.

As he held the diamond, the man muttered, “Amman inoke.”

All blood could be used for magic. No matter if it came from an unfaithful person, an Inosen, or a Sacoren—a priest—it all produced the same effect.

But only Inosen who had been blessed by a Sacoren could take blood, channel it through diamonds, and wield magic with that murmured prayer, Amman inoke.

“The Diamond Guards are coming!” she said in a low voice, her eyes flicking toward the approaching guards.

Air rippled around the man, whipping his loose clothes around him. The diamond shone with an internal light through the streaks of blood, and a moment later, the house began to restore itself. Mud brick solidified on the side wall, dry and hard-packed into a perfect corner. While the magic couldn’t cause miracles, cure most diseases, or create things out of thin air, it used the power of earth and blood. It provided shelter, helped grow crops on arid land, stopped blood loss, and cured blood-related illnesses.

Her father had used it to repair a crack in the street outside their house after Aina had seen a woman trip there. Her mother had used it on a local boy who’d been stabbed in a mugging, preventing his loss of blood so he would survive.

Using magic was how people helped themselves when they had no other option.

The man wiped the blood from his arm as the Diamond Guards approached and passed them. He’d tucked the used diamond between his fingers and waited until the guards’ footsteps faded away before finally looking around at her and winking.