Into The Crooked Place

by Alexandra Christo

  The shadows around Ashwood slithered. “I don’t care about those fools,” he said. “My elixir is going to bring the Doyen to her knees.”

  Wesley was glad his glasses hid the growing uncertainty in his eyes.

  “You’re after Schulze,” he said.

  The Kingpin made a choked sound that straddled the line between laughter and disappointment. “I’m after a new age, my boy. Fenna Schulze thinks she can pass laws in my realm that restrain us, but I was here long before that arrogant little girl took office and I’ll be here long after. Magic—black or white—keeps the realms turning. I won’t let a politician ruin it all.”

  He said politician like it was the dirtiest word imaginable.

  “And the elixir will help you do that,” Wesley said. “Is it really that dangerous?”

  He couldn’t help but ask. He had given Tavia that magic and if she got hurt—

  “Risks win wars,” Ashwood said. “My elixir allows me to open people’s minds so they can see beyond Schulze’s propaganda and into my truth. When I bring them to my side, we’ll take down this government with as few civilian casualties as possible.”

  Casualties. Not murders.

  “I call it the Loj,” Ashwood said proudly.

  The light. Or at least the street slang for it.

  The old saying used to be lojisi uf hemga—the light of happiness—but street kids started to see it as more than that. A peace of mind that became like a goal to attain. It was the feeling in your heart after your first warm meal in days, or when you managed to find shelter in the rain and could sleep on a firm mattress in place of street floors. It was the relief that came with knowing you could stop worrying for a while and let your bones rest.

  It was the reason most street kids became buskers.

  They wanted the Loj. The knowing that everything would be okay.

  And Ashwood had named his magic after it.

  “It’s really new magic,” Wesley said. “How is that possible?”

  Ashwood leaned forward and the tip of his hat flickered with candlelight.

  You know how, the ghost whispered.

  “It’s quite an easy thing to do,” Ashwood said. “When you have Crafters by your side.”

  And there it was.

  The thing Wesley hated most about Dante Ashwood.

  The most awful line to cross.

  The magic Wesley sold now was nothing short of mimicry, with trick dust gathered from the residue of magic, that barely hosted power past practical jokes. Or elixirs to alter the mind and body, extracted from dosed—and handsomely compensated—people in government-funded warehouses, only to then be repackaged and sold. And charms? They may have been the most powerful magic—and also entirely illegal—but with the right amount of training, buskers could wield them or use them to create cursed objects. With the right technology, they could even be duplicated.

  But nothing, not a single kind of magic, could be created anew.

  Unless you were a Crafter.

  Before the War of Ages, Ashwood spent decades in the company of those magical captives. He’d studied them, learned their tricks, and embedded himself in their legends until their power snaked into him and became a dark, nefarious thing.

  It was a story every busker in Uskhanya heard the moment they were recruited.

  Ashwood was not a man and he was not a Crafter.

  He was the embodiment of the in-between. A living shadow.

  Powerful enough, people said, to have lived for a century.

  And though the war was supposed to have put an end to the Crafter trade for good—though it was said to have put an end to the Crafters themselves, killing many and leaving the rest to flee—it seemed Ashwood wouldn’t let petty things like impossibility get in his way.

  He had found those rare, hidden beings and turned them into puppets.

  “How many Crafters do you have?” Wesley asked.

  He didn’t want to know the answer.

  Yes, yes you do.

  “The number is of no consequence,” Ashwood said. “But there will be no more hiding in the shadows once I am Doyen. We shall rise and make a brighter future, Wesley, filled with magic.”

  Ashwood’s power coated the air like heavy rain, soaking into Wesley’s breath.

  Ashwood belonged in the shadows, far away from the light and those who walked in it. To have someone like that in real control would plunge the four realms into chaos and tear Wesley’s city to pieces.

  Besides, there wasn’t a sane person in all of Uskhanya, crooked or not, who would support Ashwood as Doyen. Politicians may have been criminals, but people didn’t like them being so open about it. Even if Ashwood pried the title from Schulze’s cold, dead fingers, he would never be accepted. You could kill for a criminal kingdom, but not for a legitimate leadership.

  Ashwood would destroy the realms trying to conquer it, because he didn’t care about Uskhanya or Creije. He didn’t want what was best for the city and he certainly didn’t love it like Wesley did.

  He would see it burn, if that’s what it took.

  “When your war comes, what happens to Creije?” Wesley asked.

  “Nothing,” Ashwood assured him. “As long as the people stand with me. Rebellions won’t be tolerated, Wesley. Every player in this game must follow the rules.”

  “War isn’t a game,” Wesley said.

  “Everything is a game, my boy. And by the time of the shadow moon, my Crafters will be ready to win.”

  The shadow moon.

  Wesley thought back to the picture hanging in his office. He thought of the stories he had read about how it could amplify Crafter magic.

  The Kingpin’s smile snaked across to him, like he could read Wesley’s mind behind the shield of his glasses. “You know as well as I do what power the shadow moon holds over magic,” Ashwood said. “Our army will be a sight to behold.”

  He did promise to make you the world, the ghost cooed.

  Wesley tried to stop himself from wiping at that damn smudge on his cuff links, or reaching up and adjusting his tie, even though his fingers shook with the urge every time the voice in his head spoke.

  He squeezed his fists together instead.

  There had to be a line. Somewhere in the sand, there had to be a line that even the worst people couldn’t cross.

  “You gave Creije to me,” Wesley said. “So that I could make it great.”

  Ashwood tapped the orb of his cane, contemplating his words, and Wesley waited, his tie like a noose around his neck.

  Hush now, it’ll all be okay.

  Finally, Ashwood stood, lithe and towering. The room fogged around him.

  Wesley looked up at the faceless man who took him from the streets and made him into someone to be feared. The man who gave him a home and was ready to take it away with a snap of his fingers.

  The man who thought of him like family.

  The man he hated more than anyone.

  “I don’t want my city destroyed,” Wesley said.

  The Kingpin reached out a frostbitten hand and placed it on Wesley’s shoulder, almost fatherly.

  “Some things need to be destroyed,” he said, “in order to be rebuilt.”

  KARAM LICKED THE BLOOD from her teeth.

  Tricks and coin flew toward her, colliding with the rope that enclosed the ring. It was like an amphitheater, only instead of stone there was fancy wallpaper, and instead of warriors there was Karam.

  The Crook’s fighting ring was infamous for being the one place in all of Creije where it was legal to beat someone to a pulp, and it did its very best to live up to that reputation. Industrial beams thatched across the ceiling and large bulbs noosed from metal cables, with plush rows of seating that shook whenever the crowd jumped and screamed.

  It felt as cold as the people who gathered there.

  Though usually these fights had more magic than fists, when Karam was in the ring she put that showy nonsense to bed. Her opponents didn’t rely on tricks and charms to
win. There were no rules and no magic to offer protection.

  It was just her and the blood waiting to be spilled.

  Karam’s opponent leaned against the rope and ran a thumb across his lower lip.

  He was all might and no lithe, every inch of him bulky to the point of breaking. He wore no wrappings on his fists and Karam got a spray of his knuckle blood in her eye that last round.

  “Little Wrenyi girl want to play?” he asked in slow Uskhanyan, like she might not understand.

  Karam snarled on reflex.

  She wasn’t angry about the comment, or because it surprised her. It was the opposite. Karam was angry because she expected that to be the first wound her enemies tried to inflict. She seethed because she was used to it.

  It had been years and she was still in a perpetual state of not-belonging. Still an outsider. Still never quite Creije enough. It wasn’t that her skin was dark, but that it was a different kind of darkness. Burnished brown and decorated with the blue and gold tattoos famous among women in the Wrenyi realm. It was the ornate chains that threaded jewels across her scalp, even now, and the setwa—black and blue, like her face so often was—that she occasionally swept over her shoulder. It was the inflection still grasping her words, even after nearly a decade in this realm.

  It was none of that and all of that.

  Karam scuffed the soles of her feet against the floor and spat.

  “Keep smiling while you still have teeth,” she said.

  Her opponent laughed and threw himself toward her.

  His fist struck Karam’s cheek with more speed than she gave him credit for.

  She crashed back to the stone.

  Her palms broke her fall, which Karam realized a beat too late was not the smartest choice. Her hands were her weapons; better she let her face get broken.

  The crowd booed and Karam swallowed the blood slicking her mouth.

  There was no way she was going to lose to this hijada. This bastard. She would make him yield.

  Karam pounced back to her feet and threw herself at him. Her shoulder collided with his side and Karam felt the moment the point of her bone jammed into his gut.

  Her opponent let out a grunt and locked his hands around her back, squeezing.

  Karam twisted her elbow between them and shoved it into his stomach. His grip on her loosened and with the distance widened she began to punch. Hard shots directly below his ribs.

  One hand.

  Both hands.

  Until she was certain she heard some kind of crack.

  He staggered back and Karam jumped, twisting her body seamlessly through the air. The knife of her foot exploded against his face.

  The crowd rose.

  They screamed for more.

  More violence and brutality.

  Anything Karam could give to feed their empty hearts.

  She watched them grip desperately onto their seats, almost pitching themselves over for a better look. Rows of the poor and the slightly less poor, of the wealthy who tried their hardest to hide it and the dastardly who didn’t hide it at all.

  But not the one person Karam always seemed to be waiting for.

  Saxony was impossible to miss, like lightning in a thunderstorm, and sometimes Karam could almost swear that she felt it when Saxony was near. That she sensed, perhaps, the almighty power that ran through that girl’s veins.

  Whenever Saxony came to watch her fight, she stood taller than those around her and, if they were standing side by side, which they so rarely did these days, a good six inches above Karam. And even from way in the back rows, Karam could always tell that Saxony was looking straight at her, staring with eyes the same beautiful black-brown as her skin.

  Every time.

  Though seeing Saxony always made Karam feel like time had stretched unfairly between them—everything they once shared, alight in magic and secrets, was fractured now—it was still better than not seeing her at all. It was a way for them to tell each other that there was still something there. That maybe there always would be.

  But Saxony hadn’t shown this time.

  Karam cracked her fists together.

  The crowd stamped their war-drum feet.

  Her opponent pushed himself to stand and growled a string of curses.

  Karam cocked her head to the side and took in his stance. He was running on pride and fury, and she knew how quickly that ran out.

  “Wrenyi bitch,” he snarled. “I’ll make you pay.”

  Empty threats.

  Karam had faced a shadow demon in this ring, on a night where the underbosses gathered and the Crook was closed to the public.

  Her grandparents had fought in the War of Ages, amongst a sacred warrior sect whose duty it was to protect Crafters.

  Karam was a child of the Rekhi d’Rihsni.

  This man was nothing.

  He lunged and Karam spun out of the way, but the hilt of his shoulder clipped her hip and the sheer force of him sent them both rolling to the floor.

  Karam brought her knee up high between his legs and he roared. She gave him an almighty shove and then rolled to straddle his hips.

  Once she had the upper hand, Karam punched mercilessly, until the blood coated her wrappings so much that they felt slick across her knuckles.

  Her opponent spat in her face.

  Then, with brutal force, he brought the heel of his palm up to her nose and Karam fell back, a blinding pain flashing across her eyes.

  Her opponent threw himself clumsily on top of her, wrapping his hands around her throat and squeezing.

  The blood dripped from his face onto hers.

  She gasped for breath.

  He didn’t stop squeezing.

  Karam had killed before, man and demon both, but this fight was supposed to be to the yield. Yet she could tell with one look in his eyes that her opponent wouldn’t let her go.

  He was going to kill her and the crowd would cheer for it.

  Karam ran her hands up her leg.

  It felt like with one more second he might rip her head clean from her body, but she knew better than to try to pry his hands off. That would waste time and breath, and she wasn’t strong enough to loosen the hold of such a beast.

  Instead, Karam pushed aside the material on her leg and clutched her hands around the hidden hilt.

  A weapon, ready for an occasion like this.

  In one swift movement, she brought her knife up and plunged it into his side.

  Her opponent stilled.

  Karam twisted the knife.

  When he made an awful choking noise, she pulled out the blade and slid it into his back.

  His hands finally went loose around her neck.

  Heaving, Karam rolled him off her. Then she turned with her back still flat on the floor and watched him gasp.

  The crowd exploded into cheers because they knew, as Karam did, that the amityguards would not come to the Crook. There would be no punishment or retribution. What did the law matter when there could be anarchy instead?

  The man’s blood puddled toward Karam’s fingertips and she forced herself to her knees before it stained the rest of her.

  She knelt over him and said a Wrenyi prayer in the back of her mind. Not for the man, but for the girl. The one she had been when she’d first come to this realm, who cowered at shadows and cried for a family she’d never see again. A girl who grew up wanting to be a warrior, vowing alongside her best friend to topple Kingpins and revive the Rekhi d’Rihsni.

  A small part of Karam wished she felt guilt or shame for the way things were now, but it was too late. Too much had happened. She wasn’t that girl and this wasn’t Granka.

  Karam pulled the knife from her opponent’s back and wiped the blood onto her trousers.

  This was Creije and it was kill or be killed.

  KARAM STOOD with her feet shoulder width apart and took a slow sip from the dregs of her water bottle as the last hums of Creije settled into the dark.

  Since her fight finished, sh
e had been guarding the door to Wesley’s office for exactly three hours and forty-eight minutes, and she was starting to get bored.

  But luckily for Karam, she had enough practice killing to know how to kill time.

  She pictured Saxony leaning lazily on the wall opposite, legs crossed at the ankles, hair slinking over her shoulder and a dress with geometrical holes clinched tightly over her rounded waist.

  Karam sighed.

  She needed to stop obsessing over the fact that Saxony hadn’t shown up, and wondering what it meant. If Saxony was truly over her and if it was just Karam, still lingering behind, holding on to feelings she should have dismantled months ago.

  She needed a distraction.

  “Where is he?”

  Tavia Syn stepped into the narrow hallway, silver dusters spread across her pale fists. Her boots were half razor blades and her short black hair shielded the top of her eyes like a cloak.

  It was a shame she didn’t know the first thing about how to fight, because she sure looked the part.

  “The underboss is busy,” Karam said.

  “Busy doing what?”

  Karam shrugged.

  She wasn’t interested in Wesley’s dirty dealings. Whatever secrets he had, he could keep them to himself. He’d earned that right.

  After all, it was Wesley who saw the potential in Karam when she’d first come to Creije and fought in back-alley rings. He convinced the old underboss to give her a chance tending door and when Wesley became underboss himself, he kept her on as his personal guard, bringing her with him to the top. She owed him more than she cared to admit.

  Tavia snarled and crossed the hall in twelve pounding steps.

  She seemed to be favoring her left leg, the ankle of her right barely touching the floor without a grimace. Her sleeves were rolled up and there were new bruises swatching up her white arms like a watercolor.

  Tavia really did not know how to fight.

  Karam flattened her hand against the wall. “Come back with an appointment.”

  Tavia glared, which Karam did not find intimidating.

  The problem was, that for all of her black magic and even blacker lipstick, Tavia had the unfortunate problem of being infamously moral. And morality in Creije was not something to be frightened of.