Into The Crooked Place

by Alexandra Christo

  His eyes grew darker and more muddled.

  Saxony hoped she hadn’t looked that awful when the Loj had struck her.

  “Asees,” Arjun breathed. The darkness in his eyes shifted. Blinked. “Where is she?”

  He swallowed, then turned back to Karam.

  “Filthy … traitor,” he panted.

  But Saxony could see the black in his eyes dulling.

  “You are a dirty—”

  Karam punched him again.

  Saxony was a little sad that she’d beaten her to it.

  Arjun shuffled, squinted, cleared his throat. “What are you …?”

  He trailed off and then his eyes rolled, black disappearing to white.

  He blinked and when his stare returned, he looked as though he couldn’t quite work out what had happened or was happening or would happen.

  “What is this?” he asked, pulling at the ropes.

  “Did you just literally knock sense into him?” Saxony asked.

  Karam shrugged. “He barely touched the magic,” she said. “Perhaps it is wearing off already?”

  “Out of my way,” Asees said.

  She pushed Saxony to the side and knelt hurriedly over Arjun, stroking his bleeding forehead and squinting to see what other injuries he may have had.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Did they hurt you?”

  “Did we hurt him?” Saxony was aghast.

  “Asees.” Arjun’s eyes sparked. Back to brown, a less murderous and more contrite stare. “Are you okay?”

  “She is not the one you tried to kill,” Karam said.

  She slumped back onto the floor beside Arjun, exhaling in relief. The blood on her neck was thick.

  “Speaking of getting killed,” Saxony said to her. “Can you stop getting attacked? I’m going to drain myself trying to heal you all the time. This is strike three.”

  Karam laughed and the sound was more of a comfort to Saxony than anything in the realms.

  “Can you untie me now?” Arjun asked.

  “No,” Karam said. She patted him on the knee, like a consolation. “You threw a lightning bolt and knocked me out.”

  “You punched me,” Arjun said. “A lot.”

  “But not hard enough to knock you out.”

  Arjun rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue. He rested his head against the column and breathed in a deep, calming sigh.

  “Can we all make a deal to stop drinking, touching, or even looking at that elixir?” Saxony asked. “Because we have enough people trying to kill us without us trying to kill each other, too.”

  “You should never have brought it here,” Asees said.

  Saxony’s mouth very nearly dropped open.

  “You asked me to!” she snapped defensively.

  But Asees wouldn’t meet her gaze. She was still looking at Arjun with such guilt and sorrow, such true and unyielding fear. It was a sight Saxony had never seen in her sister, the destined Liege of her own Kin, and one she had never seen in her grandma, the temporary replacement they had chosen.

  It was one she did not think a Liege was supposed to have in the face of danger and death. They were meant to be stronger and more steadfast than that.

  “We must help them fight it,” Arjun said. He swallowed with a wince, like he thought there might still be some magic left in his words, and wanted desperately for it to be gone. “This would destroy us all. We cannot stand by and watch.”

  Asees nodded. “I know,” she said. “That is why we will not watch. That is why we will hide.”

  She looked to Karam. To Saxony.

  “Take that evil and go fight your war,” she said. “Never bring it to my people again.”

  “ARE WE REALLY GOING to do this?” Tavia asked.

  She stood side by side with Wesley, surveying the train station.

  Though it was not so much a train station as it was a hut on the riverbank of Sirta, with tree trunks holding up the wooden roof and casting a line of shade. There were benches made from vines and iron, sprinkled with pink blossoms from nearby trees.

  Floating railway stations were usually large and lavish, with sweeping theaters and ceilings high enough to house clouds. The trains were sleek swords that swept through enchanted waters, with windows tall and large so no part of the journey was missed. They were beautiful and grandiose and a tribute to the architecture of the city.

  At least, they were in Creije.

  But the Grankan station was not at all like that. Instead, it was beautiful for its simplicity. Tavia suspected that in Deshri or Maynit, the two larger Wrenyi cities, the stations had more in common with those she was used to. But Granka was the holy land and this was its five-river city, and there was something wonderful and serene in its modesty. Something that made it seem far more magical.

  “Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts,” Wesley said. “We need a floating train to get across the Onnela Sea in time to find the Kingpin. You said that a ship wouldn’t do and we can’t use the old steam train we rode in on since that uses actual tracks. This was your idea. If I knew you were going to flake out, I would’ve brought Falk or one of the other buskers.”

  Tavia knew that wasn’t true.

  Sure, Wesley could have brought any number of people, but he never would have.

  He brought her, because they both knew that was all he needed. Not just because this station was small and barely guarded, but because together they were a force to be reckoned with.

  Together, they didn’t need anyone else.

  Wesley gestured to the many pouches Tavia had stolen from the consort. “Magic at the ready,” he said.

  Tavia’s face scrunched. “We won’t need it. I think I could steal this train alone, blindfolded, with one hand behind my back.”

  “Don’t get cocky,” Wesley scolded. “They could press an alarm and have guards here in minutes.”

  “Or,” Tavia said, strolling forward without him, “they could piss their pants at the sight of me.”

  The train station had four ticket booths, three of which were empty. In the only open one a young man, a few years older than Tavia, leaned on his elbows, poking his head through the window to catch the passing breeze.

  He wore glasses—which were rare in Creije, where vision-correction charms were all the rage among the swells and tourists—and on the table beside him was a neat row of items, beginning with various colored charms and ending with a dagger.

  A line of protection, the preciseness of which told Tavia that he never had much use for it.

  The man asked them a question in Wrenyi and when Tavia and Wesley only blinked, he paused to take in their outfits. Tavia’s steel-tipped boots and Wesley’s fine-pressed suit.

  “Uskhanyan?” he asked.

  They nodded.

  “Creijen,” he said with enthusiasm.

  They nodded again.

  “How can I help you?” he asked in an excited rendition of their language.

  He did not suspect them to be anything more than tourists.

  Wesley smiled, all lazy charm and handsome edges.

  And yes, Tavia could admit that his edges were handsome.

  “We just have a quick question, if that’s okay?”

  Wesley’s voice was like pure honey and Tavia was surprised enough by it that she chided herself.

  She’d forgotten that outside the shroud of Creije, to perfect strangers who knew no better, Wesley could seem innocent and approachable. That at any given moment he could give the illusion of being any given thing and he did not need tricks and magic to do it. All he needed was a suit and a smile, and whatever masqueraded as charm among the rich.

  “I can help you,” the man said. “What question?”

  Wesley pulled out his gun and set it on the counter. “Are you alone?”

  The man’s face dropped and he darted for his long, neat line of protection.

  They disappeared before his eyes.

  Before the man had a chance to be confused, Tavia held out
her hand. The marbles of his magic were in her palms.

  They were almost too easy to lift.

  “Stealing is a lot simpler when you have the consort’s dirty magic,” Tavia said. “If I had a trick that let me summon an item from someone’s pocket back in Creije, I would have had so much fun.”

  “It’s clearly wasted on helping us save the realm,” Wesley said.

  “Exactly.” Tavia gestured to the new dagger tucked into her waist, which she’d also taken from the man. “Thanks for the extra weapon,” she said. “I’ve always said that you can never have too much of a good thing.”

  Sometimes she really couldn’t help herself and the look on the man’s face only egged her on.

  Wesley grinned, real and wide.

  It made Tavia nostalgic for the days when they had crafted cons as a team. When they were kids and Wesley was just an orphan like her, only a little older and lot smugger.

  Back then, the other buskers were more focused on sabotaging each other than learning the trade, but Wesley was talented enough that he didn’t need to bother being cruel, which meant Tavia didn’t need to bother hating him.

  Wesley was the one who made her practice magic, even when she got the flu or a dodgy stomach from the rations. Days and weeks and months and all Tavia did was practice, read the books he brought her, and memorize the natural way Wesley wielded charms, until finally they could busk the center of the market square together. And then, once they were older, create fortune orbs in the still of night.

  Tavia didn’t realize how much she’d missed it until now.

  How much she’d missed him. Not Wesley Thornton Walcott, the underboss of Creije and a complete bastard, but her Wesley. Her friend. And the girl Tavia had been when she was with him, as wide-eyed as those people who came to Creije looking for a dream.

  “I don’t think you want me to ask whether you’re alone again,” Wesley said. “It won’t be pretty.”

  The man slumped back into his chair. “I am alone, but soon three more come.”

  “The other ticket booths won’t be closed for long then,” Tavia said.

  She took some joy in knowing she was right. They really could have taken this place blindfolded.

  Tavia palmed her newly stolen charms, reading each one before she added them to her pouch.

  “Hopefully there’s some kind of binding magic here,” she said. “Because we’re definitely going to need him and his colleagues tied up and out of commission. Maybe a silencing charm too, so they don’t run their mouths and scream for help.”

  Wesley leaned over the counter, his smile wicked as the young man regarded him with a mix of fear and resignation.

  “You’d think with all those charms she has, some would’ve rubbed off on her,” Wesley said in a mock whisper. He tapped his gun on the counter. “Now, there’s just one more thing we need from you.”

  He turned to Tavia and for the first time in years, she felt like they were a real team again.

  Tavia leaned beside him and eyed the booth worker.

  With a grin to echo Wesley’s she said, “I don’t suppose you know when the next supply train is coming through?”

  WESLEY LOOKED ENTIRELY THE same.

  He thought becoming a vessel for Crafter magic would mean shooting ice from his eyes or the ability to kill someone with a click of his fingers.

  Sadly, it did not.

  Instead, Wesley felt charged. Not different, but elevated. Like he’d spent his entire life with only half of his energy and now, finally, he had been given the missing part. He was awake for what felt like the first time.

  Whatever lived inside of Wesley, it was born for magic.

  After only a day, he figured out how to conjure good luck—not much, but enough to win a few card games against Tavia—and an invisibility charm that made his scars disappear for an entire hour.

  He had not conjured the plague, like everyone clearly expected, and once he reached the Kingpin, he was going to use this new power to fix a very old mistake.

  If only it were that easy.

  Wesley let the warm breeze sweep across his neck.

  His feet dangled over the edge of the train roof, which sat in wait on the Sirta River, the winding stretch of water serving as a track.

  Wesley still kind of wanted a ship, similar to those he’d read about. He imagined setting sail on an old pirate cruiser with black sails, but this was not going to be at all like that.

  They had a supply train used in trade shipments and there was not a sail or a cannon in sight, and since everything was automated by magic, there also wasn’t a wheel or a conductor’s seat Wesley could stand by and pretend he knew a thing about navigation.

  Everything was mechanics and magic, and Wesley felt a little disappointed by the whole thing. It was hardly a vessel for war.

  Still, he supposed it was better than swimming to the Kingpin’s island.

  The station’s ticket booths were closed, courtesy of Wesley and Tavia—who used a few binding charms to keep the ticket officers tied up in the back—and the next passenger train was not due for a while, so passersby were few and far between.

  Wesley exhaled.

  They had been waiting thirty minutes for Karam to say goodbye to her mother and to her friends, which Wesley thought was a little long, considering that Arjun had tried to kill her.

  Elixir or not, Wesley didn’t think that warranted a pleasant farewell.

  He stood and stretched out his arms, feeling the drag of impatience cramp his bones as he walked the length of the train roof in a pace.

  The buskers toward the back were laughing and throwing trick bags while cigarettes hung from their lips. They cast routine glares to those at the front, the deadlier career criminals who waited in silence, barely blinking as they twirled knives in their hands or stroked voodoo dolls with eerie smirks.

  And then there was Falk, nearly obscured, keeping away from them all as he whispered to a delg bat nestled in the crook of his arm.

  Everything about him set Wesley on edge.

  Being a snitch was one thing, but being entirely without loyalty was another. Any man who could be bought for such a small amount of coin was one to be watched closely.

  “I’ll give you a fire charm for a spell that makes someone incapable of being an idiot,” Tavia said.

  Wesley turned to see her climbing up the ladder to join him on the train top. When he sat down, she sat beside him, her hair cutting a sharp line across her chin.

  She flashed the charm pouches looped to her belt. “Name anything,” she said.

  “The other buskers giving you a hard time?” Wesley asked.

  “They won’t stop asking me questions and following me around like little puppies. It’s like when you’re not there, they assume I have all the answers.”

  “You are my best busker,” Wesley said. “They look up to you. It’s a compliment, so try to pretend like you don’t hate them.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Tavia pulled out her knife and stabbed it into the space between them. “But if I throw one or two off the train once we get going, that won’t hurt our chances against the Kingpin, will it?”

  Wesley smiled, even though he knew Tavia wasn’t serious. She had a habit of talking gray and then getting all moral on him.

  “Grit your teeth,” Wesley said. “After we dethrone Ashwood and return to the newly saved Creije, you can go back to never speaking to any of them again.”

  “Surely defeating the man who owns my debt makes it void,” Tavia said. “When this is all over, it’s goodbye Creije and hello somewhere far, far away.”

  There was a note of sadness in her voice that gave Wesley pause.

  Usually talk of leaving made Tavia far too excited. Second to debt, the last thing she wanted to be tied down by was people, and Wesley wasn’t sure when, but somehow he knew he had become an anchor to her.

  “Was Creije ever home to you?” he asked before he could think not to. “Or was it always your dream to leave?”<
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  Tavia scraped her teeth across her bottom lip, which she always did when she thought long and hard about something, as though the steady pain and rhythm of the action would give her an answer. Like how Wesley always touched the scars that crawled across half of his body, confident the sting of the past would propel him to focus on the present.

  “I don’t know,” she said. Honest, almost grave.

  “You don’t know?”

  Tavia spoke in a shrug. “That’s the thing about dreams. They happen overnight.”

  “And then fade away,” Wesley said.

  Tavia shot him an odd look. “My muma said that you should always listen to the kind that stick around, demanding you follow them.”

  “That’s really corny.”

  “It’s supposed to be comforting,” she said. “That’s what parents do, Wesley. They make up pretty words and stories so you don’t have to. That way you get to believe them. You get to feel better.”

  Wesley shifted and turned away from her.

  He was glad Tavia had memories like that. Platitudes and proverbs to comfort her when things got too dark. He was glad she remembered the sound of her mother’s voice so fondly and that she tried to cling to those memories.

  But Wesley could never do the same.

  The only adages his father taught him were about learning to never create more than one enemy, because then he’d have to turn his back on one to keep an eye on the other.

  In truth, Wesley remembered little of his father—his old life never felt enough like his own to bother keeping—but what he did remember were warnings like that. If there was one thing Wesley’s father loved, and that thing was most certainly not Wesley, then it was warnings.

  Wesley tried to shake off the moment, but Tavia kept her eyes on him, pressing harder into it, as she always did, pushing Wesley to the limits of nostalgia. She sat in an almost determined silence beside him, like she’d asked a question and knew he wouldn’t answer, but wanted to be there just in case.

  He picked Tavia’s knife from the train and handed it back to her with a sigh. “Volo won’t know what hit it,” he said.

  “What makes you think I’d go there when I leave Creije?”

  “It’s all you talked about when we were kids.”