He was better off dead, and she hoped every moderately hungry person in the vicinity would steal his bread tonight. She no longer needed it.

Standing, she wiped the bloody dagger on her scarf, but there was nothing to be done about the mess on her arms and torso. She pushed open the cardboard door and stepped into the street, wearing the baker’s blood like a medal.

He had sold her boss’s information to the Red Jackals gang, filling his pockets with kors for gambling, but guaranteeing his death by her blade. She didn’t know what the information was, nor why the baker had sold it to the Jackals. Her boss, the Blood King, never told her more than she needed to know in order to slit a throat, and she wasn’t stupid enough to test his patience by asking for details. Everyone in the south of Kosín—everyone but the baker, apparently—knew that crossing the Blood King was a death sentence.

The slums’ springtime scents of piss, sweat, and blood filled the early evening air. Smoke from the factories spilled down the hills into this southern part of the city known as the Stacks, home of the poor and the faithful who hid their religion and blood magic practice. Houses of mud brick, corrugated metal, and rain-beaten cardboard lined the slanting roads, pressed so close together, they were nearly stacked on top of each other. Children kicked balls across the mud with scrawny dogs barking at their heels, but they all scattered when she neared them, covered in blood. Slurred yells reached her ears as she walked the curving streets and passed groups of men huddled around fires. A small part of her was tempted to return to her old ways, to buy industrial glue from the men on these corners and inhale it until she passed out on the sidewalk.

But eyes watched her from dark corners. The Jackals had been tailing her since she’d entered their territory tonight. She avoided the shadows, staying in the center of the street with her head held high to prove she was fearless even though her heart pounded in her throat.

Some of the streets of the Jackals’ territory and the Blood King’s pressed against one another, leaving tensions fierce whenever someone trespassed. The Jackals had tested her boss’s patience by paying the baker, and she was here as a reminder that messing with the Blood King was the quickest way to get your throat cut in Kosín. The only question was whether they would risk angering him further by coming after her for walking and killing on their streets—and whether they were stupid enough to try to fight her.

Neutral territory was close, marked only by the dead end ahead with a narrow, weed-choked gap between two houses. If a lifetime here hadn’t taught her which streets were safe, she’d have died years ago. A little boy sat in front of one of the houses, twisting gold and silver wires into designs to be peddled for coins in the richer districts. Aina kept her eyes on the gap, counting down the seconds until she could reach it and move on to her next job.