The end of Lyra Avenue was marked with bike stands and a corner bookshop before it curved into Rose Court. Now, a gaggle of people choked the street and shouts rang out over the usual bustle.

“You’re annoyingly tall,” she scoffed, standing on her toes and nearly falling over from trying to see above the crowd.

“Want to sit on my shoulders?” he teased. “I can buy you an ice cream cone after.”

“Shut up. What’s happening?”

“They’ve made a circle. Some guards are there. Their rifles look extra shiny today.”

“What the hell?” With a frustrated huff of air, Aina placed her hand on Teo’s shoulder and pressed up, so her feet dangled above the ground and she gained a better vantage point.

A circle had formed in the center of the crowd. The Diamond Guards held the crowd at bay, rifles hoisted and used to shove unruly citizens back into line. In the center of the circle, two men knelt with hands tied behind their backs and nail-studded leashes around their necks. Droplets of blood covered the stones they knelt on. One of the guards removed rough diamonds from the men’s pockets and tossed them on the ground where they clattered dully on the street.

A chill swept down Aina’s spine. As cautious as she was with her diamond sales, she still feared this would be her fate one day.

She’d been a child during the war, but as if she could suddenly view it through her parents’ eyes, she imagined the hundreds of people who’d met their end in the same way—the shine of diamonds the last thing they saw. She imagined her parents kneeling to pray in front of an altar to the Mothers, but then the altar disappeared and their knees struck concrete, where they waited for a bullet to strike like the two smugglers here now.

General Alsane Bautix stood to the side of the prisoners. A crisp black suit over his muscles hardened by years of military service, his red copper hair and beard bright against his ivory skin, a glittering diamond earring in one ear, and unreadable features chiseled from jagged stone, General Bautix was the last person anyone in Sumerand wanted to cross. He’d originally built a fortune through manufacturing guns and other war machinery, and then joined the military. After King Verrain instigated the war, Bautix helped turn the army against him, and became known as the hero who killed Verrain and thus ended the war. His victory gave him the highest commanding military position and a seat in the Sentinel, the country’s governing oligarchy.

King Verrain, who’d been a Sacoren, hated that people had begun moving away from faith and toward an industrial future that relied on technology. Verrain found Inosen who followed his guidance, and together they began to shut down factories by force, starting with the event fourteen years ago known as the Estrel Ka-Noten—the night the stars fell. He’d demanded universal worship of the Mothers, and for all signs of industry and technology to be destroyed. The Steels fought back, forcing their employees to take up arms to fight. The Estrel Ka-Noten triggered five months of civil war.