She paused for a moment to check that her weapons and diamonds were hidden, in case she came across any guards, then joined the crowd on the main road of Rose Court.

Cobblestone streets glittered under the lampposts that flickered on at night. Floor-to-ceiling glass shop windows displayed silk dresses, leather shoes, decorative plants and rugs, boxed fruits, wine, and other merchandise for prices that could feed a family for a year in the Stacks. A stone fountain ahead was bathed in yellow light from the shops, while a couple of miles south, electricity vanished and plumbing became a myth.

Each year, this side of Kosín grew richer, and the other side—her side—fell further and further behind.

Diamond Guards patrolled the streets, the gems of their namesake studded on the buttons and buckles of their jet-black uniforms. They were an extension of the national army, reserved as a police force for the city. Aina’s hand closed around the hilt of one of her daggers by habit; she suspected trouble whenever she saw the guards. Most of the people in Rose Court barely spared them a glance, but Aina watched as a pair of them approached an older woman in a tattered brown dress and patched jacket at the corner of a bank.

They asked the woman a question in low voices. Her eyes hardened as she replied. In the next instant, one of them pushed her against the wall, pinning down her brittle arms, his diamond-edged dagger at her throat. The other guard turned out her pockets.

If rough diamonds were found on the woman, they’d shoot her where she stood.

While any worship of the Mothers was outlawed and meant a prison sentence, selling rough diamonds or using them for magic guaranteed an execution. It was considered a crime worse than faith alone, since those diamonds could be sold as jewels, and using them for magic took money away from the country.

Coins spilled out of the woman’s pockets instead of diamonds, and Aina let go of some of the tension in her shoulders. The woman could have gotten the money from anything, maybe even honest work, but the Diamond Guards would find a reason to accuse her of theft. In the nicer parts of the city, they became more brutal in meting out punishment, as if to prove to the moneyed industrialists, the Steels, that they were doing their jobs properly.

Disgust crept through Aina as the guards interrogated the woman. But like all the well-off people in Rose Court, she turned and walked away as if nothing had happened. Not even her boss’s bribes could keep a bullet from her brain if those guards caught her with rough diamonds.

That was the way of the Steels; they’d let people like her starve in the streets without a twinge of concern, then punish them again for trying to find a way to feed themselves.

A bell jingled when she entered the jewelry shop. It was small and cramped, but warm. Aina smiled at the door attendant, then browsed under the light bulbs hanging in gold-wire cages. An elderly couple examined jade earrings on a pillow inside one of the glass cases displaying the shop’s best wares. She glanced over another customer’s shoulder at the exorbitant prices diamond rings sold for.