Into The Crooked Place

by Alexandra Christo

  “I always have a plan,” he said. “Our final test.”

  “We already conquered it,” Saxony said. “Falk is dead.”

  The train drew forward. The Crafters shouted spells and launched magic into the maelstrom, but it did nothing.

  They did not stop.

  They did not slow.

  The vortex sucked in the sea like it was drinking it and their train sped forward, unrelenting.

  There was nothingness inside that thing.

  It would drag them to the bottom of the ocean.

  “Wesley!” Tavia screamed.

  He gritted his teeth. “You said you trusted me.”

  It was like an accusation.

  “So trust me when I say I’m not letting you die,” he said. “The phantoms told us to keep steady on our course if we wanted to see the Kingpin. They said the ultimate sacrifice would be needed and that we all had to be part of it. Killing Falk didn’t finish a damn thing.”

  “Death waits for you together,” Tavia said. Her voice was distant as she recalled the phantoms’ words.

  “You think they meant it literally?” Karam asked.

  “They told us it was something we had to face as a team. After I shot Falk and they just let us go on our way, I knew we hadn’t conquered anything. This is the last test. The ultimate sacrifice is us.”

  “You want us to kill ourselves, underboss?” Arjun was incredulous.

  “We won’t die,” Wesley said again, a little exasperated at having to repeat himself.

  The train reeled forward and they were all flung roughly onto the floor.

  Saxony landed in a heap on top of Karam.

  The train circled the maelstrom, spinning madly in its orbit. The force of it made them slide across the carriages.

  Karam felt a pressure on her chest holding her to the floor, sucking the air from her lungs, and all the while they were spinning and spinning.

  The rain sliced through the smashed windows and across her face.

  She swallowed the taste of bile. She was going to throw up if she didn’t die first.

  “Are you sure that we should not turn around?” Karam yelled out to Wesley, wherever he was. “Are you sure that we will not die?”

  There was a moment of silence as the train spun, and then Wesley’s voice cut clear above the wind. “I’m sure that if I have to say it one more time, I’m just going to kill you all myself.”

  Good enough, Karam thought.

  Wesley did not make a habit of being wrong and he did not make a habit of dying, so that was good enough for Karam.

  Though nobody knew the Kingpin, if there was one person in the realms who might be able to understand how his twisted mind worked, then it was the underboss of Creije. Following him was their best bet. It had gotten them this far.

  “If my Kin dies, I will drag you into the doomed spiritlands myself,” Arjun said to Wesley.

  “You won’t need to. You’ll be there right beside me.”

  The train swung forward again and suddenly Karam was looking into the gaping mouth of the sea. Into an impossible endlessness.

  She placed her hand on either side of Saxony’s cheeks and kissed her, one last time. Savoring her taste, her smile and her feel, just in case.

  She wanted to say a thousand things, but the wind wailed and time was nearly up and everything that needed to be said was already known. Words could not do some things justice.

  Karam braced herself.

  And then they were swallowed whole.

  Being inside a maelstrom was like dying, only it didn’t end. The air choked Karam. The water choked Karam. Karam wasn’t sure there was anything not choking her.

  The train kept spinning and falling into an endless pit of black.

  Karam was sure she should have been flung out the window and into the abyss by now, but she was pinned in place. The wind filled her lungs and the water washed it down, taking root in her stomach and then gurgling back up until she was breathing seawater.

  She couldn’t feel Saxony’s hand in hers anymore, or anything but the pain of dying again and again.

  And then the realms came rushing back.

  The train crashed onto something solid and Karam’s head flung backward onto the floor. Her entire body felt broken. Alive, but definitely broken.

  She let out a groan.

  It was bright out, but Karam couldn’t see the sun. Only—

  She rubbed her eyes.

  There was no sky anymore, only the ocean floating above them, crashing like a thunderstorm overhead.

  A sky made from Ejm Voten.

  Karam jumped to her feet.

  “Get up,” she said, to nobody and everybody. “Get up right now.”

  Saxony stepped to her side. Karam wasn’t sure if she was hurt, but she did not dare take her eyes off the sky to look. They had fallen through the ocean and now its storms floated around them, and then overhead like a cloud bank.

  “That’s impossible,” Saxony said.

  Karam could not have said it better herself.

  THEY WERE ON LAND.

  They were alive and on land.

  The sea raged around them like a cage, their train marooned in the eye of the storm with the moon shining above it like a beacon. It was like they were beneath a rip in the very fabric of the realms.

  Or like they were in the perfect prison. Saxony almost wondered if they had broken in, or if they had actually been lulled into a trap.

  The train was intact, miraculously, and beached on a large patch of sand. Ashwood’s castle sprawled out from a rock face in metallic brickwork, floating atop the blackened nothingness like oil. Its steel towers reached for the growing darkness, while its pathways gradually dissolved to the water. Waves rocked, but never touched the walls, as though even the sea was scared to try its hand at an attack.

  “If everyone is still alive, we go out as planned,” Wesley said.

  Tavia appeared beside him, rubbing her backside. “Because your plans have been working out so well.”

  She winced at the bruises that were sure to be covering her body.

  Wesley pressed a hand to the radio again. “All of the Energycrafters on board will make this entire army invisible, then proceed in groups to plant the time charges around the castle.”

  Not including Saxony, there were nine other Energycrafters, which was more than enough to create an invisibility field to cover their numbers. They could spread out from all sides in an ambush, except the front door, where Saxony assumed she, Tavia, and Wesley would still enter.

  “Karam will coordinate you,” Wesley said. “When I give you the signal, I want you to rain time down on this island. Whatever happens, we end this tonight. The shadow moon is only hours away. We can’t let Ashwood live long enough to see it.”

  The buskers and Crafters nodded, quickly filtering into groups, each with an Energycrafter to shield them from sight. Wesley’s barrels of time, which he had more or less perfected over the last few days, were by their feet.

  Before the Crafters made the army disappear into nothingness, Saxony hugged Karam goodbye. She promised that the next time they saw each other, she’d have Zekia in her hands and would finally introduce them. Karam told her that the next time they saw each other, she’d better have the Kingpin’s head in her hands too.

  Then Karam kissed her, short, but never sweet. She embraced Saxony all too quickly and then turned without a goodbye to exit the train. Saxony’s stare lingered on her.

  “Don’t die,” she called to Karam’s back.

  Karam didn’t turn, but her voice was like knives in the night. “Make sure the Kingpin does.”

  There was silence and not a guard in sight as they waited outside the drawbridge. Their train meandered behind them, pressed into the sand, where it had been thrown from the sky.

  Karam and Arjun were long gone with their invisible army.

  The flames of Saxony’s magic licked her veins, ready to be let loose, but she held it in. Let the King
pin think she was just another little Crafter out of her element.

  When the time came, she’d burn him to cinders.

  A bowl of flame atop the drawbridge sparked to life and a voice bellowed down to them. “Who has a death wish big enough to approach the Kingpin of Uskhanya’s castle?”

  Wesley sighed. “I guess my reputation doesn’t stretch as far as I would have liked.”

  A bullet shot to the floor by their shoes.

  Saxony jumped and Tavia swore, pointing her gun up to the guard tower.

  “Skeht!” Tavia yelled.

  Wesley didn’t move. Saxony wasn’t if sure he had even blinked.

  “That was a warning shot,” the guard said.

  “Yes.” Wesley nodded. “Thank you for explaining. Would you care to hear my warning?”

  His gun was in his hand before Saxony had the time to take a breath. Wesley fired, just once, and a body fell down from the guard tower. A man, not much older than them, in a black guard’s uniform with Ashwood’s symbol imprinted on his chest. The bullet was lodged in the center of his brow.

  “I don’t give warnings,” Wesley said.

  He looked up to the empty guard tower, where the flame flickered unattended.

  “Tell the Kingpin that the underboss of Creije has traveled a long way to find him,” he called, to whoever might be listening. “And I think he’s going to want to hear me out.”

  Wesley looked sideways to Saxony and smiled like the devil she suspected he was. There was a moment’s pause and then the chains of the drawbridge shrieked and the great barrier began to lower.

  A man and a woman greeted them, dressed in the same black uniform as the one Wesley had killed, with the Kingpin’s crest like a brand over their hearts. Crafters. Saxony could smell it on them and when they smiled at her, catlike and fearless, she knew they could smell it on her, too.

  “Wesley Thornton Walcott,” the man said. He had a well-trimmed red beard, fox-brown eyes, and fair skin. He opened his arms in welcome. “My name is Gael. Please, come this way.”

  Wesley stepped forward, but the young woman held up her hand to stop him. “You leave your weapons here.”

  Her voice carried a familiar lilt.

  Many Gods.

  Saxony all but gasped. She almost hadn’t recognized her. The thick braid that brushed against the sword at the woman’s hip. The gold staves that covered both of her arms in the magic she had conquered. The tall, stiff stature of a warrior used to protecting her kind.

  Asees.

  She was alive, in the Kingpin’s hold. And she didn’t look like a prisoner.

  “Asees,” Saxony said.

  She thought about the pained look on Arjun’s face when the delg bat had spoken her last words. The guilt that took over Karam, thinking she could have prevented it all if she had stayed in Granka. If she had never met Wesley or Tavia. Or Saxony. A guilt Saxony knew was not Karam’s to bear.

  “You’re alive. You—”

  “Be quiet,” Wesley said.

  Saxony turned to him, about to tell him to go straight to the fire-gates, but Wesley was looking at Asees, guarded, his fingers twitching against his gun.

  “That’s not her,” he said.

  Asees narrowed her golden eyes and when she smiled, it was like her lips were being tugged upward by string. Saxony saw it now. Not just the mark peeking out from her collar, but the way Asees moved so rigidly and how her large, severe eyes didn’t burn with fierceness and suspicion like they had back in Granka. Her stare was empty. Vacant. Glazed over in such a way that Saxony got a chill when Asees met her stare.

  The magic—the very one they were trying to stop from spreading across the realms—had Asees under its power.

  “Your weapons,” Asees said.

  “If you want them, you can pry them from my cold, dead hands,” Wesley said.

  Asees smiled again, the pleasant puppet. Saxony’s throat tightened. If Karam were here, if Arjun were here, then Saxony knew what they would do. They would bring this island to its knees in an instant.

  Grief and anger and wild, wild despair.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Gael said.

  His voice, at least, seemed to be his own, but that didn’t make it any better. It only meant he was either brainwashed or a traitor by nature, and Saxony thought it better to be a puppet than a turncoat.

  “The Kingpin wants you alive,” Gael said. “This way.”

  He gestured once more and Wesley pulled a pair of mirrored glasses from his pocket, slipping them on.

  Asees and Gael lead them through a large courtyard and into the main hall. Saxony’s eyes scoured every inch of the place that might have held her sister captive for three years. She wanted to memorize the floors Zekia could have been dragged along and look out for any other Crafters. For the faces of any men and women who may have been the ones to bind Zekia and keep her here.

  She wanted to remember that so she could know who to kill first.

  The walls were brown-black like the floor, and gleaming enough for Saxony’s shadow to seem like a reflection. The castle was quiet and the echoes of their respective footsteps became rhythmic among the silence. It was only when Tavia swore a few times as she took in the castle’s interior that Saxony remembered she wasn’t alone.

  Wesley kept his focus on Asees and his hands on his gun. His eyes were obscured by his glasses, but Saxony had already seen the twitch in them back at the drawbridge.

  They approached a room, barricaded with doors taller than mountains. The Crafters stepped forward, palms thrust out, and in unison they spoke. Half spell, half passphrase. Saxony didn’t recognize the language—it sounded like a mishmash of every tongue in the four realms—but when they spoke it, the doors bellowed open.

  The ceiling was made from glass, the sky calling down to them and giving a perfect view for the coming shadow moon. The floors were oil-slicked and great tusks of bone jutted from the ceilings and walls in decoration. Animal and human.

  Dante Ashwood was seated in the center, on a throne of shadows. Six Crafters surrounded him.

  Saxony could barely see his ghostly outline, if not for the pale, pale fingers that clasped the orb atop his cane, the magic illuminating the skin of his hand. His face was hidden in darkness, and his eyes, though Saxony could feel them on her, were nowhere to be seen.

  She squeezed her hands to keep the flame at bay. He was the creature she had killed in a dream place. This time, she would do it for real.

  From the shadows beside the Kingpin, a young girl stepped forward. She was dressed all in white, with black hair to her fingers and eyes like living embers. Unbound. Unafraid. Sitting alongside the Kingpin with a hunter’s gaze.

  “Sister,” Zekia said.

  Her voice had not changed. Her smile had not changed. Her neck was not marked.

  “We’ve been expecting you.”

  THE GHOST WHO LIVED in Wesley’s mind was standing before him. Real and unchanged from the last time—the first time—he had seen her.

  And she was alive.

  Despite everything Wesley thought, everything Ashwood had said about absorbing her powers, she’d managed to survive, and now she was beside the Kingpin like she couldn’t possibly belong anywhere else.

  I need a left hand too, the Kingpin once said.

  “Sister. We’ve been expecting you.”

  Her voice was still so composed beyond her years. It was not the voice of a captive, nor did it carry the smooth puppetry of Asees’s.

  This was her, the same girl Wesley knew, and she was very much in control. He didn’t have to look at her neck to know it.

  Saxony collapsed onto her knees. “Zekia.”

  The name was a cry.

  Wesley flinched.

  Saxony’s sister. This whole time it was her.

  Yes.

  She smiled at him as her voice whispered in his head.

  Not a ghost, like he’d thought. He wasn’t crazy, like he’d thought.

  All thes
e years she had been whispering to him, spurring him to be awful. He wondered if Ashwood knew and if it had been part of some twisted plan.

  “You’ve come a long way to find me,” Ashwood said.

  Wesley straightened, kept his chin high.

  “You came a long way to make sure you weren’t found,” he said.

  Ashwood leaned forward, his smile like a stain in the darkness. “But you were never one for following orders.”

  “And you’ve brought us a gift,” Zekia said.

  Saxony stayed on her knees, eyes filling with tears as Zekia approached her. She wore a ring that was a duplicate of the one Wesley had on his own thumb: the Kingpin’s insignia, worn by all of his underbosses. Only Zekia was not an underboss and hers was not black. It was the same bright fire as her dancing eyes.

  A mark of a loyal ally.

  “I should have protected you,” Saxony said. “I should have come sooner.”

  “Stand, sister. If you fall on your knees, you stay that way forever.”

  That didn’t sound like the girl Wesley knew.

  Time was such a bastard. It made fools of some and monsters of those they left behind.

  “We thought you’d abandoned us,” Saxony said. “I didn’t realize you were taken until—”

  “I wasn’t taken,” Zekia said. “I did leave.”

  Ashwood leaned back in his throne, arms sprawled over his shadows. “She offered her life so my boy might have his.”

  Hearing Ashwood talk in that twisted paternal way made Wesley recoil.

  Zekia was the thing he regretted most. He had killed to be where he was, but betraying her seemed worse. It seemed worse because she had trusted him to be better.

  Wesley’s greatest talent was disappointing the people who trusted him.

  All this time he thought her voice was punishment for that, her ghost haunting his thoughts to make sure he would never make the same mistake, but Zekia wasn’t dead. She was haunting him from right here, as flesh and blood. Trying to coax him further into the darkness.

  “She doesn’t know who the underboss of Creije is,” Saxony said.

  Zekia looked straight at Wesley, lips twisting. “He wasn’t the underboss of anything when I knew him.”

  “She’s the girl from your regret,” Tavia said, as though she had only just recognized her. “The Crafter you sacrificed to the Kingpin to become underboss.”