Shaking her head at the article, she entered the bar. It was nearly empty except for a few early-morning regulars. A group of old men played cards in the corner with a cloud of smoke around them. A smile crossed Aina’s face as she took in the person she was looking for—his broad shoulders, the dark jacket he always wore that hid the multiple guns he carried. Seated on a bar stool, he spun a half-empty mug in his hands and chatted leisurely with the ruddy-faced bartender.

Aina approached and checked that no one was behind her. Then she pressed one foot on a floorboard, making it creak, and threw herself to the ground.

The man rose and fired a gun into the space behind him.

5

The gunshot slammed against her eardrums as the bullet made a hole in the wall.

The bartender dropped a bottle of firebrandy in shock, and glass shattered across the floor. Amid the bartender’s swearing, one of the card players yelled through the haze of smoke, “It’s too early for that nonsense!”

But Aina was laughing loudly from the floor.

“You almost blasted my face off, Teo!”

Teo Matgan rolled his eyes as she sprang to her feet. She wasn’t short, but he stood nearly a foot and a half taller than she did.

“You’re ridiculous, Aina.”

She sat on a stool and spun to face him, grinning from ear to ear. “Buy me a drink.”

Minutes later, Aina was giggling into a mug of firebrandy larger than her head. “Let me get this straight. Someone hired you to kill a lady. You thought she was pretty, so you then proceeded to—”

“Sleep with her, yes.” He nodded with a fond memory in his eyes. “And then I didn’t want to kill her anymore.”

“I bet your boss wasn’t happy about that.”

“I don’t have a boss. He was just the man who hired me. But you’re right, he wasn’t pleased, so I killed him instead. The lady heard about it and paid me, said I’m a model citizen and I deserve to be compensated for my services. I don’t know if she meant the services with my gun or my—”

“Stop, stop, stop!” Aina nearly fell off the stool laughing. The men playing cards in the corner glared at her, so she lowered her voice when she next spoke. “I don’t want to think about your little gun!”

“Aina is blushing; it’s a miracle.” Teo shook his head. She could see why so many people found him attractive: He was nineteen years old with clear, golden-brown skin, wavy dark hair that curled in at his sharp jaw, and eyes like copper glinting in the sun. Though he’d been born in Sumerand, his parents had emigrated here from Linash shortly before he was born. Sometimes he used random Linasian words in conversation, or took on his parents’ accent in a way that made most girls line up to date him. If only they knew how many guns were concealed under his jacket. “And who said it was little?”