Into The Crooked Place

by Alexandra Christo

  “Anyway,” Wesley said. “I can gather an army of buskers, but we need to find the Kingpin if we’re going to take him out.”

  “You don’t know where he is?” Saxony was a little shocked by that. “Why can’t you just arrange a meeting? Aren’t you his golden boy?”

  Wesley looked like he was trying very hard not to kill her.

  “That’s not how this works,” he said. “Anytime I see the Kingpin it’s on his whim, not a schedule. Sometimes I’ve gone months without direct contact and in case you didn’t notice, we’re on a bit of a deadline. The shadow moon is only weeks away. We need the consort. She’s the only one in the realms who knows his location and, luckily for us, her headquarters are in Creije.”

  “How do we get the information from her?” Tavia palmed her pocketknife. “Ask her nicely?”

  “That won’t work,” Wesley said.

  Karam cracked her knuckles. “So let us ask her not nicely.”

  “I appreciate the enthusiasm, but the locations of the Kingpins are buried in the hallows of the consort’s mind, guarded by magic,” Wesley said. “She couldn’t tell us even if she wanted to. The information is only triggered through a passphrase and once it’s revealed the consort forgets.”

  “A combination of a memory charm and a revelation spell.” Saxony wasn’t sure whether to admire it or be disgusted by it, but either way she could admit that it was clever.

  Twisted and convoluted and something only people with way too much money and time would bother thinking of. But clever.

  “So how do we get it from the consort’s mind?” Saxony asked. “We’d need—”

  She stopped herself from finishing the sentence and a horrible feeling took over.

  The serpent’s smile on Wesley’s face only made it worse.

  “Pull whatever threads you can,” he said. “No mercy.”

  Saxony blanched and the air warmed a few degrees with the heat of her magic.

  “There’s no way I’m doing an extraction on the consort,” she said.

  The blackest spells were the kind that invaded people’s minds, just like the magic they were trying to stop the Kingpin from using. Extractions carved through memories, cutting out thought, until the agony became too much to bear. Amja always said that it was the worst kind of magic.

  The kind that could curse Saxony’s Kin more than they already were.

  “That kind of magic is forbidden,” Saxony said. “It would drive the consort insane.”

  Wesley merely sighed in a way that signaled his boredom with the idea of a moral debate.

  “Someone can only go insane if they survive,” he said. “Which I heard they rarely do. So problem solved. Besides, the Kingpin might kill your sister while we argue over this.”

  Saxony’s eyes widened. “You manipulative son of a—”

  “Careful,” he said. “You’re about to get personal.”

  “Is this really your big plan?” Saxony asked. “To make us all into murderers like you?”

  “It’s not murder. It’s survival.”

  “Using black magic isn’t easy. Killing someone isn’t easy.”

  “But it can be quick,” Wesley said. “And that’s almost the same thing.”

  Saxony’s jaw tensed and she wondered if she could set him ablaze just by glaring at him. It was like Wesley was trying to provoke her.

  “So, are you ready to be part of my winning team?” Wesley asked. “There won’t be room for hesitation on the day. A couple of dozen guards patrol the consort’s building and once we get what we need from her, they’ll descend. Not that they’ll stand a chance of catching us.”

  He said it without a flicker of doubt in his voice, because Wesley knew, they all knew, that if there was one thing he was good at, then it was winning. Whether he deserved to or not.

  “Do we have a deal?”

  Wesley approached Saxony slowly and deliberately, holding out his hand like it was a test. Daring her to shake it. Daring her not to.

  Saxony bit down on her tongue until she felt the blood hit the back of her throat.

  The ring of the underbosses was tight around Wesley’s thumb. The seal of the Kingpin like a brand on his skin.

  If Amja could see her now, she’d say Saxony had lost her mind.

  She would think there was nothing—no excuse or reason—good enough to make a deal like this. The Kin would never team up with an underboss, even if it meant getting Zekia back, or getting their revenge for all of the wrongs done to their people.

  Saxony took Wesley’s hand.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  Because she was not Amja.

  She was not afraid.

  Saxony would do whatever it took to find the Kingpin and put back together what little remained of her family.

  And that included killing Wesley, the moment he stopped being useful.

  WESLEY HAD A GUN in his hand and a man on his knees.

  “It’s a gift,” Ashwood said.

  Only Wesley’s sixteenth birthday was months before. Besides, he thought it looked more like an offering.

  Take this and give me your soul, it seemed to say.

  The man by Wesley’s knees had a sack over his head, and there was a girl—the girl who was destined to haunt his thoughts—standing resolute at the Kingpin’s side, smiling at Wesley like she wasn’t bound in chains with blood in her teeth.

  Smiling like she knew she would climb inside his mind and punish him for the choice he was about to make.

  The gun in Wesley’s hands was a bone gun, which was not a fancy term, but a very literal thing. The only metal was the bullets, and everything else was as gray-white as the Kingpin’s fingertips, carved from person to weapon, with a grip engraved in swirls of red that Wesley thought might actually be bloodstains.

  He stared from the gun to Ashwood, to the girl who was just now starting to see how awful he was.

  When the sack was removed from the captive’s head, Wesley was not at all surprised to see his underboss.

  His face was caved in on one side from the beatings, the scar of an old knife fight now nothing more than a splinter in the hollow.

  “Wesley,” the underboss said, still on his knees.

  He didn’t look surprised either.

  “Make it quick when you—”

  Wesley pulled the trigger before he could finish, which was the quickest way he could think of.

  The gun made no sound.

  Wesley felt the kickback, saw the smoke appear at the end of the barrel, and a hole spread through the center of the underboss’s forehead. But there was no noise from the gun. No gasp from the spectators.

  Only the sound of the girl, whose legs collapsed beneath her.

  “I liked the other future better,” she said.

  Wesley knelt down and ran his fingers over the underboss’s eyes to close them. Then he slipped the seal from the dead man’s thumb and onto his own.

  That was how street kids became street kings. How buskers became underbosses.

  It was the only way to survive in a realm hungry enough to swallow the weak whole.

  Trust no one, betray everyone.

  Kill or be killed, always.

  WESLEY HAD barely managed to sift down an entire city’s worth of buskers to fifty who could probably, maybe, if he paid them enough, be trusted and who would probably, maybe, if he paid them enough, not shit their pants once they learned the mission. People who were intrigued by the shiny offers he made: freedom from their life debts, a clean slate, and an honest job, all in exchange for one tiny little coup.

  They were waiting for him now, at the old railway tracks the tourists used for novelty. Having a Doyen as an ally had a few perks, including wiping the train schedule so Wesley and his buskers were free and clear to commandeer, leaving Uskhanya for the realm of Wrenyal, where they could gather supplies and allies.

  It was not going to be as glamorous as the floating railways, but Wesley was used to playing whatever hand he was d
ealt.

  He shifted.

  The waiting room at the consort’s headquarters was liquid black with wall-to-wall mirrors that reflected his dead eyes right back at him. Tonight was one of the few times in the month that the consort was in Creije, and with the shadow moon only weeks away, they had to act.

  If not now, it was never.

  “What if something goes wrong?” Tavia whispered. “I don’t fancy dying today. I haven’t had time to properly prepare what I want you to say at my funeral.”

  Karam regarded her incredulously. “This is not the time for jokes,” she said.

  “Lighten up,” Tavia teased. “Who doesn’t love a bit of breaking and entering?”

  Karam glared. “This is supposed to be stealthy. We are not breaking anything.”

  “Just skulls,” Tavia said, and Saxony bit back a laugh.

  Wesley stretched out his arms to adjust his cuff links and then scolded himself for it, but there was a wrinkle in the wrist of his sleeve that he couldn’t seem to get out.

  “Nothing will go wrong,” he said.

  He tried not to make it sound like a prayer.

  Someone cleared their throat and Wesley looked up to see the secretary standing over him.

  “The consort will see you now,” Leifsson said.

  Wesley squeezed the shift charm in his hand, straightening his suit as a cover while the charm melted in his skin.

  Magic was a language made from wishing, with glyphs in desire and consonants shaped from dreams. When the charm sank into Wesley’s skin, he didn’t need to think about what he wanted. He could feel it weaving through the map of his mind and finding its place in the center.

  It already knew.

  “This way,” Leifsson said.

  He clasped a gloved hand behind his back and gestured to the mirror. It surged like a vortex.

  “Your hand,” Leifsson said.

  The charm was well into Wesley’s blood now and he tried to breathe through the pain, not even letting his fingers twitch as his skin was pulled and filed away, replaced by something new.

  Shift charms lasted an hour at best and were a migraine waiting to happen. They didn’t just glamour someone to look a certain way, but quite literally morphed and mutated their body, burning away the old to make way for the other.

  Wesley could feel his skin sizzling as Leifsson looked at him expectantly.

  He could feel it reshape and remold, his head pounding as the rest of him adjusted to this new, foreign part of himself. Skin that wasn’t his. A hand that wasn’t his. It was the only way to stop the glass from reading Wesley’s true intentions.

  Clever, clever boy.

  He lifted his new hand to the glass. The pain was a dull sensation now, tingling in place of searing, the pounding in his head reduced to nothing more than an echo.

  Wesley’s body had accepted this new part of him with ease and open arms.

  Welcome, it whispered, to the lion’s den.

  The door swirled under Wesley’s touch, his reflection distorting and then righting itself as it read the magic on his hands. Read secrets that weren’t his and tucked them away somewhere for safekeeping.

  When Wesley pulled back, the glass dissolved.

  He tried not to look relieved, and turned to the others with a curt nod before they stepped through the doorway and straight into the harsh red of the consort’s office.

  “Walcott,” came a lazy drawl.

  The consort lounged on a maroon sofa, wearing a brand of arrogance that matched her suit perfectly. She took a sip of something as white as milk and winced like it burned going down.

  “It’s not often I get a visit from the Kingpin’s most precious toy,” she said, watching for a twitch in Wesley’s eyes that never came. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Wesley pulled the bone gun from behind his back. It felt light, fitting perfectly into the grooves of his hand as he took aim.

  “Pleasure’s all mine,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

  THE MOMENT THE BULLET cracked through the magical relay, it was like the fire-gates broke loose. Saxony was sure the noise from the sirens alone was going to make her head explode.

  An iron wall slammed from the ceiling, blocking off the doorway they’d stepped through and the lights pulsed, blinking her from darkness and back into red.

  Then another wall clamped over the window closest to Tavia.

  Then behind where the consort sat with her glass smashed at her feet.

  Every escape cordoned off.

  They were trapped.

  The wall farthest from Saxony trembled. The shelves that hosted an array of liquor quaked until the bottles crashed to the floor and glass sprinkled onto the carpet.

  And then the room began to close in.

  The wall shook under its weight and scraped across the floor, inching toward them. Making the room smaller and smaller by the second.

  “What’s going on?” Tavia yelled over the siren.

  “Protocols,” Wesley said. He hitched the gun back under his suit jacket.

  “Did you know the walls would close in before you shot the security system?”

  He gave her a look. “Obviously.”

  Karam ran toward the impending wall, barricading herself against it. “Then forgive me,” she said, breathless in anger, “but why in spirit’s name did we plan for you to fire?”

  “The relay system records any magic or sound. If we kept it functional, the Kingpin would know our every move. Besides, with the room sealed, no signals can get in or out. Including warnings or distress.” Wesley shot a pointed look at the consort. “Any security traps we trip in her brain will have nowhere to send their message.”

  Tavia threw herself beside Karam. “And what good will that be when we’re dead?”

  “I’ll bet anything the passphrase to end the protocols is inside the consort’s head,” Wesley said.

  The consort ran a palm over her closely shaved hair, wiping the sweat from her skin, and spat at the floor by Wesley’s feet. “That passphrase is a security measure in case someone important is trapped in here,” she said. “Which clearly they aren’t.”

  Wesley touched a hand to his heart. “Ouch.”

  He looked to Saxony.

  She knew what she had to do then and she was already picturing the consort, dead by her hand.

  A life for her life. This woman, for Ashwood’s location.

  And the black magic, damning her family.

  “I don’t know what you’re planning, but it won’t work,” the consort said. “You’ve killed us all, Walcott.”

  Wesley nodded, like that wasn’t news, and suddenly Saxony wished her amja were there. Or Zekia. Her sister would know what to do. She’d know the right words and the right magic and she wouldn’t panic, like Saxony was half-tempted to.

  In fact, Saxony was half-tempted to just kill Wesley before she let the wall have the pleasure of crushing him.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Wesley said to her. “Let’s get this magic show on the road.”

  “And fast,” Karam said.

  Saxony watched the sweat drip into her eyes. When Karam took a hand off the wall to wipe her brow, it advanced and Karam cursed, finding her footing and regaining her grip on the room as it crawled inward.

  Saxony’s hands shook.

  An extraction was awful magic, outlawed by Crafters long before the war. Her amja said it was a violation of their gifts. An assault on the Many Gods and a way to ensure bad luck. If Saxony did this, her amja and their entire Kin would feel it.

  Saxony felt her staves grow hot.

  “It’ll kill her,” she said. “It will curse my Kin.”

  “And this room will kill us,” Wesley said. “Weigh your priorities.”

  “Saxony.” Karam’s teeth were gritted to the point of buckling. “You must do something.”

  “Looks like you’re outvoted,” Wesley said.

  He gestured to the consort, who paled under the realization of wh
at was to come.

  Saxony shook her head.

  Killing Ashwood was one thing—it was like wiping out a sickness—but killing the consort, who was nothing but a pawn, with black magic? It would endanger the people Saxony cared about most.

  She was trying to save her family, not find new and terrible ways to destroy it.

  This magic was forbidden for a reason and Saxony didn’t think she could face the consequences that might come with breaking such a sacred law.

  She couldn’t risk it.

  She just couldn’t.

  “Many Gods damn it!” Tavia yelled. “Move.”

  She shoved Saxony out of the way.

  “What are you doing?” Wesley asked.

  “Lending a hand.”

  Tavia fumbled in her pockets for magic, cursing when all she came away with was some kind of reverie charm.

  “If it were that simple, I would have done it myself,” Wesley said. “Our charms are no good. We need a Crafter.”

  Tavia squeezed the charm, letting it disappear into her hands. “Just shut up and let me try.”

  Tavia pressed her magic-soaked hands to their new prisoner and the consort shuddered, her eyes flicking backward.

  Tavia was really going to try to link her mind to the consort’s with a trance charm. Saxony wasn’t sure if it was genius or idiocy, but either way Tavia was willing to do what she couldn’t.

  “Hurry up!” Karam yelled.

  She fumbled against the wall as it lurched closer, the weight of it too much for her to bear alone.

  Wesley cursed, as though he’d forgotten about the room closing in. He reached into his pocket and when his hand slipped back out, it was coated in dust. He held up his palm and the wall groaned as it slowed under Karam’s grip.

  But it didn’t stop.

  Wesley swore again, then muttered something in far more revered tones.

  It was magic that Saxony might not have been able to hear, but that she could almost certainly feel. It crawled over her and extinguished the fire beneath her skin, sucking the flames from her like a black hole.

  Wesley clenched his fist and the wall came to a stop.

  He turned to Saxony, blood trickling from his nose.

  She almost gaped.

  What demon bargain had he made to get power like that?