Into The Crooked Place

by Alexandra Christo

  “You were right to want to fight,” Asees said. “Rescue the others. Avenge this madness. Create the future our ancestors fought to give us.”

  Her voice sounded like the wind.

  That’s all there is, Karam thought.

  The legacy of an entire Kin packed into a messenger bat and then gone, just like that.

  Karam looked to Arjun.

  He did not blink.

  He did not speak and he did not cry.

  He looked like Karam felt. As though the realms had ended in the time it took for him to breathe. All this time and they hadn’t even known.

  Arjun’s people, Karam’s people, Saxony’s people.

  “Ashwood killed them all,” Tavia said.

  Her voice was softer than Karam had ever heard. Delicate, even. She swiped a tear from her cheek.

  “Because of us,” Tavia said. “Punishment for helping us.”

  Something like guilt flashed across Wesley’s stoic face. He adjusted his cuff links, like there was nothing else to do but that.

  Karam wanted to cry. Her father’s pendant sat on her heart like a weight. Hei reb, if he were alive to see this, it would have broken him. To know that their family had failed their duties because there was nobody left to carry them out.

  Karam’s selfishness had damned them.

  “I am going to find Dante Ashwood,” Arjun said. “And I am going to make him pay.”

  “You won’t be alone,” Wesley said. “We’re in this fight together.”

  Arjun looked up at him and something new passed between them. An unspoken truce to put away their differences. To forge a true alliance, even if it was temporary.

  Arjun had lost part of his family, and Wesley Thornton Walcott, underboss of all of Creije, would fight to avenge them.

  If there was one thing a man like Wesley understood, then it was vengeance.

  Karam clutched her father’s pendant. “Whatever it takes,” she said. “If it is blood the Kingpin wants, then we will spill his next.”

  VICE DOYEN ARMIN KRAUSE was not impressed with the underboss of Creije. The only problem was, he had no way of telling him.

  Wesley damn Thornton Walcott still had not checked in. He had not made contact through crystal ball or delg bat, and at this moment, Krause would have settled for a flare so he could at the very least know where the underboss was heading next. What was he planning? And were those plans going to betray the ones they had agreed on?

  The magic markets carried on, buskers selling their cheap tricks and gullible little magic-lovers lapping it all up. Krause cleaned his glasses just to take a break from looking at them.

  He needed to get out of this city and away from its charms. Better Fenna Schulze get rid of it all and throw anyone who dared use magic in a cell. Better, when once Wesley—if Wesley—managed to kill Ashwood, they burn it all to the ground. Better they burn the underbosses with it. If only Fenna had the backbone to do so.

  The mess Wesley and his band of crooks had caused at the train station was a political nightmare, which was the most dreadful kind of nightmare. Shooting up factory buildings and public property with dark magic, in full view. Destroying tourist monuments with that same kind of paraphernalia.

  Krause sighed.

  Nearby, a group of buskers was putting on an excessive performance, throwing tricks into the air like fireworks, juggling with balls of light and speaking in riddles to the patrons. Pretending like nothing was happening, had happened, or was going to happen very soon. Though they must have known, because all buskers were crooks and had their ears to the awful deeds of past and future. Krause didn’t doubt they knew of the elixir and had, perhaps, even sold it themselves.

  Without their underboss, they were going quite rogue.

  As much as Krause hated to admit it, the streets of Creije were restless without Wesley, and the magic sickness was creeping slowly into the quiet of the night. There had been five cases just this week alone and Fenna was powerless to stop it. They all were. The only man who knew where Ashwood was and had the same darkness in his heart, the same awful magic and crooked crew, had disappeared into the ether. Krause had no way of informing the underboss that his city was reaching its limits.

  Then again, perhaps Wesley was dead.

  Perhaps they were all doomed.

  “Do you believe in magic?” a man asked in his ear.

  Krause took a disgusted step back.

  Despite the stretching sun, the man was hidden by the shadows of a building, his voice as quiet as a whisper.

  “Get away from me,” Krause said.

  He had no patience for buskers trying to peddle their filth.

  “We must protect the magic,” the man said.

  His voice was not quite right.

  He held out a pale hand, fingers short and bony. In the center of his palm was a vial and inside that vial was a magic more beautiful than Krause had ever seen. It glowed purple in the day, tiny orbs of sunlight running through it like blood.

  Krause couldn’t look away.

  In the distance, someone screamed.

  There were panicked footsteps, a crash. Someone swore. And Krause knew, he could sense it, perhaps even see out of the corner of his eye, that people were running. But Krause couldn’t stop looking at that vial. It was so beautiful and so bright, and against the stark white of the man’s hands it looked almost like a chasm. A pathway into another world.

  Krause reached out for it, but just as he was moments from taking the strange vial, one of the running people clipped his shoulder and his concentration broke.

  Krause swiveled around to confront the clumsy fool and saw chaos.

  The stalls of the magic markets, broken by bodies. People were fleeing in panic, their screams so loud that Krause wasn’t sure how they hadn’t pierced through to him sooner.

  There was blood everywhere, alongside magic and knives, and Krause couldn’t work out who was doing the killing and who was doing the defending.

  A boy lay on the ground, begging and bleeding. A woman poured something into his mouth.

  Magic. Purple. Like the one in the man’s hand that was so, so beautiful.

  The boy sat up, smiled at the woman, and ran into the crowd.

  “Would you like to help us?” the man asked.

  Krause looked back to him and the moment he stepped out from the shadows Krause’s breath stopped. His heart felt like it stopped. The man’s eyes were as black as rotten trick dust, and there was blood across his face like vessels rising to the surface.

  “You filthy little addicts,” Krause spat. “What is this madness?”

  “It is not madness,” the man said. “It is magic. It is truth.”

  And then from nowhere, Krause felt the slice of a blade. Through his heart, across his spine. He felt the ungodly pain as it pierced through skin and bone, and heard the noise, over the man’s laughter, when he slid it back out. A wretched, damp swish.

  Krause fell to his knees.

  The man looked down on him.

  Krause grabbed at his ankles to stay upright.

  “We must protect the magic,” the man said.

  Krause staggered for breath and looked up and into the black, black holes of the man’s eyes, which held the end of everything.

  And then the world faded away, until only screams remained.

  THOUGH WESLEY HAD BEEN working on a way to turn time into a weapon for a while, the shadow moon’s fast-approaching deadline was doing nothing to make the process any easier.

  They had just over a week to reach the Kingpin before he harnessed the power of the shadow moon to amplify his Crafters into unstoppable killers. Before he used the Loj to make Creije into an army.

  Unfortunately, Falk, for all his blustering and experience, was a nervous worker. With the threat of war—and the threat of Wesley—his hands turned clumsy and his excuses became repeats of the day before.

  Wesley didn’t tolerate failure on a good day, but now war was on the horizon and Creije
was in the firing line. He could only hope that Krause was watching over his city while he was away.

  “The problem is the binder,” Falk said.

  He wiped the sweat from his brow, but the beads trickled down the tattoo on his neck, giving tears to the bat above his collar.

  “I don’t have a binder,” Wesley said.

  “Exactly.”

  Arjun peered into the barrel.

  It was brimming with time charms the Crafters had collectively spent days manufacturing. Wesley had even conjured a few himself, and though they didn’t shine quite as brightly as the others, he bet they still packed a mean punch.

  The barrel was a mix of magic and wires, with Wesley’s tech and explosives precariously entwined. The plan was simple: use the charges to freeze time and give them the upper hand they would surely need against the Kingpin.

  Thanks to Arjun—not that Wesley ever would thank him—they’d finally figured out a way to make the charges go off safely, which was the most important part. But they hadn’t found a way to exclude themselves from the blasts, which was definitely the next most important part.

  Still, Arjun was a welcome respite from Falk. He had a knack for understanding the wrinkles of it all and helping to iron them out. They made a good temporary team. Falk linked the charms to the explosives, but Arjun linked the charms to a spell. Or, more precisely, a passphrase that would set them off. And Wesley had discovered a way to thread multiple barrels together so they would all respond to the phrase at the same moment.

  There was just that small matter of not getting time all over themselves.

  “What is a binder?” Arjun asked.

  “It’s like immunity,” Wesley said. “We bind ourselves to the charms, so when they go off, they know to skip over us.”

  “We need part of everyone,” Falk said. “We’ve got to figure out a way of gettin’ the entire army to bind to it.”

  “We could use a psychic link,” Wesley said.

  “Too much risk,” Arjun said. “If we all link to the charms, then we will all be linking to each other. We will be able to see into each other’s souls and hear each other’s thoughts. It would be enough to make anyone lose their minds.”

  And what a shame that would be.

  Wesley’s fingers twitched by his side.

  He didn’t like that idea at all. Especially the part where their army saw into his thoughts. He hadn’t built his career on secrets just to have his every whim exposed.

  Besides, one intruder in his mind was more than enough.

  “We could use blood magic,” Arjun said. “It is the most powerful kind.”

  It was not the worst idea Wesley had heard. In fact, it seemed like a pretty good idea. He was bothered to not have thought of it first.

  Falk shook his head. “We’d drain this whole vessel just tryin’ to fill barrels,” he said. “We’ll have to think of somethin’ else. What if we just used one barrel? It’d still pack a punch and—”

  “We would not need to fill every barrel if they are all linked,” Arjun said. “Just one drop of blood from each person would be enough.” He frowned at Falk. “Do buskers know nothing of magic?”

  Wesley put a hand on Falk’s shoulder. “He’s more bang than brains.”

  “But you agree it could work?” Arjun asked.

  “Maybe.” Falk swallowed, running his hands across the wires. “If the link is steady, I guess the blood could piggyback off it.”

  Wesley resisted the urge to clap Arjun on the back. He didn’t want them to do something as perilous as bonding.

  “We have a plan, then,” Wesley said.

  “Actually, I had the plan,” Arjun said.

  “If you live into next week, remind me to express my gratitude.”

  Wesley rolled his shirtsleeves up to the elbow. The oil from the explosives seeped through the material and smudged across his tattoo. Across his scars. If any of them lived into next week, Wesley would need a lot of new suits. And if they won this battle, he planned to return to Creije and never leave again.

  The realms outside of his were unpredictable and alien. They held no spark of home, and the adventures they offered were the wrong kind of hazardous. Wesley liked his risk measured and calculated. He liked knowing what was around the corner so he could figure out exactly how to beat it.

  He liked having a clean suit.

  When the battle was over, he’d go back to the home he’d built and make it even stronger. He’d make the entirety of Uskhanya a fortress from the Dante Ashwoods of the realms. He’d unite the cities like they had never been before.

  When Wesley was Kingpin, he’d build a family to go alongside his home.

  “Make it happen,” he said to Falk. “I’ll let the others know we’ll be spilling blood a little early.”

  Wesley exited the hold, leaving Falk to work. Arjun was hot on his tail, jogging to catch up with his brisk pace as Wesley moved through the carriages.

  “Did you get those marks in battle?” Arjun asked. “Or defense?”

  It was a good question and Wesley shifted. Nobody had asked him about his scars before. Probably because he rarely had them on show underneath his suits and even if he did, the tattoos did their job of hiding quite a lot. But Wesley also suspected that people didn’t want to know the answer or how he would react to the question.

  Arjun being so brazen caught him off guard.

  “I don’t know,” Wesley said, keeping stride. “Scars are the past and I’m more focused on the future.”

  “You never asked your family?”

  “I don’t have a family,” Wesley said.

  Lies. You always were such a liar.

  “Everybody has a family.”

  Wesley stopped walking and fixed Arjun with a tired look. “Maybe in Granka, but Creije was built on the backs of orphans. Buskers are the kids the realms forgot. Skjla?”

  Arjun gave a solemn nod, showing that he did indeed understand.

  “I did not mean to offend you,” he said. “I only ask to know more about the man I have aligned myself with.”

  “Well, now you know. Do you have any more irritating questions?”

  Wesley walked ahead, a little faster than before, but Arjun kept pace easily beside him.

  “Do you think you are powerful enough to stop your Kingpin with just these charges and some borrowed magic?” Arjun asked, as though he were genuinely curious as to whether Wesley’s confidence was a charade, or if they actually had a chance of winning.

  Wesley slipped his hands into his pockets. “Are you underestimating me?”

  “Enough of my people were slaughtered through the ages,” Arjun said. “With your Kingpin stealing us from the streets again, it is only right that I am wary.”

  “Wary? Or scared?”

  “Vigilant.”

  Wesley shrugged. “Fortune favors the brave.”

  “And only a fool does not heed the warnings of cautious men,” Arjun said.

  Wesley arched an eyebrow at him. “You just made that up.”

  “After what happened in Granka, I need to be a protector for my people,” Arjun said. “With Asees … gone.”

  He did not seem to be able to say the word dead, like refusing to speak it somehow made it not true.

  “I must become Liege now and I must protect what is left of us. I cannot fail them the way I failed Asees.”

  Arjun’s eyes held a look of pain so raw that Wesley had to fight not to look away. He tried to imagine if it were his family—if it were Tavia. If the Kingpin took her from him. Wesley tried to imagine a life where she wasn’t safe. Where she wasn’t by his side, not because she was roaming the realms, free, finally, but because she would never be free again.

  It felt like something inside him was cracking.

  Your weakness is in sight.

  Careful, careful, who you show those cracks to.

  Wesley took his hands out of his pockets and then shoved them back in, the absence of his cuff links throwing him off
balance.

  “We both worry for our people. I suppose we are alike in that way,” Arjun said.

  Wesley put a hand to his heart, swallowing the weight of the conversation. He hated the exposed feeling rising in his chest.

  “I’m offended,” he said, and Arjun laughed.

  That was better. Comfortable. It was far easier to tease Arjun than to think about all they both had to lose in this war and the common ground they shared. Truthfully, Wesley saw a lot of himself in Arjun. Not physically, of course, because where Wesley was lithe and agile, Arjun was thick-shouldered and intensely muscular. But in other, more unnerving ways, like the stubbornness and the confidence. The thirst to prove himself to his people and the way Arjun’s eyes shimmered with magic, like it wasn’t just a skill, but a part of him he could never be separated from.

  There were even the gold staves tattooed down the length of Arjun’s arms, so similar to the map of Creije on Wesley’s own body. A map that covered the scars of his past with a new future. It was a reminder that the only home that mattered was the one Wesley had built for himself. It seemed to Wesley they both carried what mattered most on their skin like a sacred brand that could never be taken.

  Arjun was a little of who Wesley was and a little of who he could have been. Someone righteous and stalwart, who fought for honor rather than power. The man Wesley set out to become when he’d taken the Kingpin’s hand all those years ago.

  The man he knew it was too late to be now.

  “You promised me that you would help save my people, or get vengeance,” Arjun said.

  “I know what I promised.”

  “Was it all just words?” he asked. “Because, by the spirits, if it was a way to look good in front of your buskers, then—”

  “I don’t make promises easily,” Wesley said. “And I never break them.”

  Maybe for the first time, Wesley wasn’t thinking about being a Kingpin or finally feeling like he was worth a damn. His mind was filled with Arjun and Saxony and Karam and the people they’d lost. Their family. In a lot of ways, Wesley was responsible for that.

  He thought about everything he had done to become underboss. All of his dirty secrets buried so, so deep, and the dead girl’s voice that still crept into his mind. It struck Wesley that maybe, just maybe, this promise might be a way to make amends for it all.