King of Fools

by Amanda Foody

  “—Captain Hector believes that all of the other deaths within St. Morse Casino, including Vianca Augustine, can be attributed to Bryce Balfour. The suspect is a twenty-three-year-old male—”

  “But Harrison killed Vianca!” Lola snapped, shaking the radio. “The whole room saw it! This is a blatant lie. They’re going to use St. Morse as an excuse to do everything that—”

  Levi shushed her so they could hear Fenice.

  “After the tragedy and treason that occurred tonight, it is vital that I end this message with a statement of hope. Despite the best efforts of criminals and of the monarchists, our sovereignty has prevailed. I have just received news that the election results yielded a two percent lead in favor of Harrison Augustine, the next representative of New Reynes. On behalf of the First Party, the city, and the entire Republic, I offer him sincere congratulations on this victory. We will not let such progress be overshadowed by violence. We—”

  Levi swatted Lola away before she blew the radio’s speakers and switched the dial off.

  “There you have it,” he said drily. “The new era.”

  The room fell into silence.

  “When Bryce left, his last words were about the devil,” Enne said. She held the golden Shadow Card Bryce had given her in her hand. “He said the same words Sedric once said to me. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

  “Malisons and shade-makers are part of the Faith,” Lola told her. “But the Bargainer is a legend from New Reynes. They can’t both be true.”

  “Of course they can,” Sophia said. She was the last one in the room, and she lay on the other couch. This was the first Levi had heard her speak since Lola told her about Jac. Since then, all she’d done was burn a series of matches and watch them snuff out.

  She stood up abruptly, making everyone in the room blink and wake up. She stomped over to the table and threw down something with shining gold foil. A Shadow Card.

  “How did you get this?” Levi asked. “You weren’t inside the casino with us.”

  “I found it in my pocket when I got here.” Levi was about to respond that that was impossible, but of course, he’d learned better by now. “Check yours.”

  The others nervously rummaged around in their own clothes. Roy was the first to find his, tucked away within his shirt. “That wasn’t there earlier,” he murmured, paling. He pushed away Grace’s feet, as though it was her touch that had caused this trick. Then he turned it around, revealing the Justice card.

  Levi and Enne revealed the Shadow Cards they already possessed: the Emperor and the Empress. Then Lola found the Hermit folded within her boot, Tock brandished the Chariot from the front of her dress, and Grace pulled the High Priestess from a slit in her skirt. Sophia reached out and flipped over her own card: the Wheel of Fortune.

  “Every legend about this city is true,” Sophia said.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  Whether it was the countdown of a timer or the spin of a roulette wheel, Levi had escaped one game only to fall victim to another. But he no longer had a taste for destiny. New Reynes could take his throne and bury it beside his best friend.

  For so long, Levi had wanted to be better than the other lords; he’d thought he would take his kingdom but keep his conscience. But now he didn’t see the point in being better if he couldn’t protect the people he cared about.

  He didn’t need to be better. He needed to be smarter.

  He didn’t need to be righteous. He needed to be ruthless.

  For several moments, none of them spoke. Not until Enne pointed at Levi and said, her voice strained, “There’s one more. In your front pocket.”

  Levi looked down, and his shoulders relaxed. He pulled it out. “This one is always there. It’s the Fool...” But he frowned when he saw the writing scribbled across the Fool’s face in red ink.

  You have been invited to play...

  ENNE

  Today a gangster would hang, and half the city had gathered in Liberty Square for the occasion.

  Enne wrapped her coat tighter around herself and leaned into Levi. She was hyperaware of the number of whiteboots present, standing watch at every corner.

  As much as it pained her, Levi was right. They couldn’t save Jonas.

  But they could stand witness...and say goodbye.

  Not that Enne had any particular attachment to the Scar Lord. He’d helped her once, and she appreciated that. The City of Sin was full of villains, but she was starting to believe that maybe he wasn’t one of them.

  Not that it mattered now.

  “Who’s that?” Levi asked, nodding to the stage, where a young woman ascended the steps.

  Enne almost didn’t recognize Poppy, dressed all in black, her eyes downcast and bloodshot. She looked as though she’d come straight from her father’s funeral.

  “That’s Prescott’s daughter,” Enne answered quietly.

  There was an obvious shift in the crowd upon her arrival, from chatter to whispers. The image of a grief-stricken daughter could move the heart of anyone, even those who’d disagreed with Worner’s politics. Harrison Augustine was being sworn into office across the city, but Enne was willing to bet far more spectators had come here.

  “I bet they won’t let him fall,” Levi said darkly. “I bet they’ll let him choke.”

  Grace and Roy had returned to the Ruins District with the rest of the Spirits to recover in their own home. Sophia had retreated back to Luckluster. Lola and Tock were elsewhere. Which left Enne and Levi to attend the execution.

  “I hope you’re wrong,” Enne whispered. They’d both seen far too much death last night for such a gruesome display today.

  “I’m not.”

  Unfortunately, Enne agreed with him. The city hadn’t come to watch a clean death, and the wigheads would want make a spectacle of this. Last time New Reynes went to war, each of the lords had hanged. This wasn’t just a sentence—it was a promise.

  Enne hadn’t only attended for Jonas’s sake—this was a promise to herself, too. Considering the haunting message Bryce had left them and the dangerous rhetoric on the radio, Liberty Square seemed a likely fate for them, too. So she would watch Jonas die. She would surround herself with hateful stares and morbid anticipation.

  And she would make a promise to herself that her story wouldn’t end here. Not hers, not Levi’s, not anyone’s she cared about.

  “Did you mean it?” Levi asked suddenly. “Did you mean anything you said yesterday at St. Morse?”

  Enne’s breath hitched. “I meant... I meant everything—”

  “But Vianca told you to fix things between us.” His voice was frighteningly cold.

  “She did,” she answered softly.

  “Then...” His expression darkened. “I guess we’ll never know, will we?”

  Enne gaped at him. She knew he was grieving, but she had seen him grieve Reymond. He hadn’t sounded like this.

  “I’m telling you I meant them,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Don’t you believe me?”

  She reached for him with trembling fingers, but Levi stiffened and turned away.

  “Vianca told you to break me. But she didn’t tell you how,” Levi said. “You almost murdered in cold blood before. Killing Jac... The thought came from somewhere.”

  Enne was so horrified that she could think of nothing to say in her defense. Was that what he truly thought of her? That she was a monster? That she’d devised this?

  “You don’t mean that,” she said quickly.

  “I keep wondering... Do you wish you’d killed Owain that day? That Bryce hadn’t fired first?”

  Enne didn’t like the coldness in Levi’s voice. It didn’t sound defeated, like it had last night when she’d told him about Jac. It sounded heavy and resolute, like he’d already made up his mind. As if she didn’t already relive Jac’s death e
very moment she closed her eyes. As if she hadn’t spent all night awake with guilt.

  “Now that I know you’d hate me either way,” Enne said softly, “I guess I do.”

  Levi was prevented from responding when Jonas was brought to the stage, a dark hood over his head. Enne’s breath hitched at the sight of him. He was limping, and though most of his skin was covered, violet bruises peeked out below his sleeve. When they pulled off his hood, Enne felt her blood run cold as the crowd sneered. He’d been beaten until he was almost unrecognizable, and someone had carved “Scar Lord” into his forehead with a blade. The skin around the words was oozing and raw.

  “Jonas made his choice when he killed Worner Prescott,” Levi said. Even so, Enne found his fate difficult to stomach, and all the more so when she considered how her and Levi’s ends could be the same.

  Jonas looked up through swollen eyes and scanned the crowd. Enne swallowed as his gaze fell on them. Jonas mouthed something to them that she couldn’t make out.

  “Do you know what he’s trying to say?” Enne asked. She had to force the words out, force herself to speak to Levi. If he truly felt as he’d told her, that she’d conceived the idea to kill Jac herself, then how could he bear to stand beside her?

  “I think he said, ‘I’m sorry,’” Levi answered. “I don’t like this. We shouldn’t have come.” But Enne stayed rooted where she stood. She needed to watch, no matter how much it hurt. Maybe Levi thought otherwise, but she was not heartless.

  The judge climbed onto the stage as the executioner secured the noose around Jonas’s neck. “The accused is found guilty of the crimes of murder and treason. His sentence is death.”

  Jonas grimaced and continued searching through the crowd. Enne’s stomach tightened. He was waiting for help, she realized, but they had no plan this time.

  “The accused is given an opportunity to confess or bring forward names in an attempt to lighten their sentence.” The judge cleared his throat. “I’ve been told you intend to bring forward information. Is that correct?”

  Jonas nodded.

  A dreadful feeling settled into Enne’s stomach.

  There’s no information in New Reynes that I don’t already know, Jonas had told her the day she visited him. Or that I can’t find out.

  “Speak your confession for the crowd,” the judge told him.

  “I know the identity of Séance,” he said. Though his voice was hoarse, Enne heard him perfectly, and her blood ran cold in her veins.

  Once the city knew her name, it wouldn’t be long before they knew her face. And she would never walk freely again.

  Levi gripped her shoulder tightly in warning, but Enne’s fingers were already reaching for her gun. Jonas hadn’t damned her, not yet.

  Levi wrenched her arm down before she could aim, his expression livid.

  Maybe it really was instinct. Maybe she really was a monster.

  But he didn’t scold her for that. “You’ll be telling the whole crowd you’re here,” he hissed. She would’ve preferred him to curse at her with hatred, not this. This cold, unfeeling logic.

  “So what do we do?”

  “We do nothing.”

  She shouldn’t push him—his best friend was dead. He wasn’t himself. So Enne swallowed down her nerves and turned her attention back to the stage, where Jonas was working himself up to speak again.

  “Her name is Enne Salta,” Jonas declared.

  A murmur passed through the crowd, and Enne winced at the sound of it. She could no longer hide behind a mask. She had come close to considering Jonas an ally, but with five words, he was leading her into ruin.

  My only ulterior motive is curiosity, he’d lied.

  “Come on,” Levi hissed, sliding his hand into hers and shoving through the crowd, and Enne was too dazed to think anything of his touch. Soon, the wigheads would search her records. They would dig up her life in Bellamy. Her old classmates would stare at her face on the front page of their newspapers and not remember who she was. Her home would be searched, her belongings looted. Everything about her life would be on public display.

  “The sentence stands,” the judge said, taking a step back to join the executioner.

  “Wait,” Jonas rasped. Enne was no longer looking at the stage—she was pushing, ducking, stumbling her way toward the edge of Liberty Square, her one hand in Levi’s, her other still squeezing her gun. “There’s more.”

  Enne cursed Jonas’s desperation. There was nothing he could say that would save him—the wigheads were determined to have a victory today. He was only committing more betrayals, and any remorse she’d felt over his death had long vanished.

  “Enne Salta isn’t her true name,” Jonas said. “And I’m not sure what is.”

  Do you have other secrets I should know about?

  Her heart leaped into her throat. She made a split-second decision to break away from Levi, lunging for the closest bench and climbing on top of it. Although she stood behind the crowd, the whiteboots and civilians focused on the gallows, she was still in plain sight. She could be seen.

  But the other option was worse.

  “Then it’s no help to us,” the judge said gruffly. The executioner reached for the lever, and Enne aimed her gun, hoping the executioner would pull first.

  “No—I’m not done. I don’t know her name, but I know her talent,” Jonas gasped.

  Enne fired, but a moment too late. The crowd screamed, but not before Enne made out Jonas Maccabees’s last words.

  “She’s a Mizer.”

  The bullet hit him between the eyes, and he slumped over into the noose. Even so, the executioner pulled the lever, dropping the trapdoor below him, so that his already dead body fell, jolted, and then hung limply from the gallows.

  A spectacle.

  Enne had made a promise—a pointless, pathetic promise—not to die here, and so, as the eyes in the crowd turned to find the Scar Lord’s killer, she jumped off the bench and raced to the street corner, where Levi stood waiting, his gun also raised.

  But it didn’t matter how fast she ran—they’d seen her.

  It didn’t matter how precisely she’d shot—her secret was known.

  It didn’t matter that she’d escape today—from now on, she’d always have to run.

  The City of Sin had asked Enne to play another game, and this time, she wouldn’t have her mask or a false name from an old life to hide behind. And after facing countless villains and repeated betrayals, the only thing Enne knew for certain about the game was that there were infinite ways to lose.

  But even broken and exposed, this was not the end.

  Her gang was out of volts—she would make more.

  The North Side was a kingdom conquered—she would take it back.

  The Families and the Scarhands had fallen—she would rise.

  If Levi believed the city had stolen Enne’s conscience, then so be it. For the first time since she’d come to New Reynes, Enne wasn’t merely playing to survive. She was playing to win.

  And in order to do that, she needed to become what history feared most.

  She needed to become queen.

  EPILOGUE

  Harrison Augustine was sworn into office with one hand on the Republic’s constitution, and the other over his heart—or, more specifically, over the pistol concealed in his breast pocket.

  Hours later, he sipped a Snake Eyes and stared out his window at the City of Sin. It was late evening, and of course, like any compassionate politician, he’d canceled his victory party in light of the despicable and shocking assassination of his opponent.

  It was unfortunate that Jonas Maccabees had been caught and hanged. There was no way to pardon the North Side now, as he’d planned. Harrison still had appearances to keep up after all.

  Black smoke smothered the skyline of the North Side, and Harrison knew t
he city well enough to pinpoint the exact location of the fire: Luckluster Casino.

  Harrison smiled to himself. He and Sophia had both gotten what they’d wanted. Vianca Augustine and Charles Torren were dead. Luckluster burned, and soon St. Morse would, too. Harrison had even won the election fairly, but slimly enough that he didn’t regret the fact that Worner Prescott now lay in a mausoleum, dead from Harrison’s own gun.

  He didn’t like close calls.

  But as much as Harrison wanted to celebrate, he wasn’t drinking this Snake Eyes to reward himself. He was drinking because he needed to think, and thinking about the House of Shadows was best done at least partially inebriated.

  The bell on his door rang. Harrison startled—he wasn’t expecting anyone tonight. He downed the rest of his drink and answered it, raising his eyebrows when he saw who was waiting for him.

  “I’m surprised you’re here,” Harrison told her. “I thought we were done with each other.”

  “Not quite,” Sophia Torren answered, unrolling a piece of saltwater taffy.

  “I was just admiring your work across the river.” He moved to let her in, and she took a seat on his living room sofa. She smelled of smoke and candy. “Where’s your partner?”

  Something dark passed across her face. “You should lock the door,” she said flatly. Harrison pursed his lips, but he did as instructed. “I’m going to get right to the point—Luckluster is burning, and I have new plans.” She popped the taffy in her mouth.

  “Not even going to congratulate me?” he asked.

  “Does that really work on you? Flattery?” She met his gaze coolly.

  “It depends on your request.”

  Sophia leaned forward, and there was something about her eyes in that moment that made him uncomfortable. They looked familiar. “I know you’re more like your mother than you care to admit.”

  “You must be feeling awfully lucky to walk into my home and say those words to me.” He smiled tightly. “I’m not even sure what you mean.”

  “I’m assuming you heard about the Scar Lord’s last words,” she said.

  Harrison nodded grimly. Everyone in the Republic had probably heard by now. It was why he’d been dwelling on the House of Shadows. First, Bryce Balfour had showcased his talent in a violent spectacle at St. Morse, and now one of the most notorious street lords of the North Side had been revealed as a Mizer.