The consort’s body was angled toward Tavia. Blood on her cheek, her eyes wide and accusing.
Wesley aimed the gun at the reflection and fired.
The doorway exploded at their feet.
“We need to go,” he said. “Shattering it will only keep the consort’s guards at bay for so long. They’ll find another way in.”
Tavia stood, trying not to look at the consort.
“How do we get out?” she asked. “There’s no other exit.”
Wesley gestured to the new hole in the building.
“You’ve read one too many children’s tales about Crafters.” Saxony peered out of the wounded building and down to the streets below. “We can’t actually fly.”
“Maybe you can’t,” Wesley said.
Tavia felt him looking at her and she knew he was thinking of the hover charms she’d stolen from under the nose of his predecessor. The ones she had used to break into the amity precinct.
“I’ve only got three left,” she said.
Wesley pulled a hand through his hair, the bone gun still firm in his grip. “Many Gods, Tavia. You think I let you keep those so you could just throw them away?”
“You don’t let me do anything,” she said. “And they weren’t yours in the first place.”
“You should know better. I inherited everything when I became underboss, even the stolen things.”
He adjusted his tie indignantly.
He looked ridiculously punchable.
It was typical that even when their only choices were falling to their deaths or being tortured by the consort’s guards, Wesley could still make time to be a pompous ass.
Tavia folded her arms across her chest. “Three is more than enough.”
“Are you volunteering to be left behind?” Wesley asked.
“I’m saying that if we hold hands, then we should be able to stretch three charms. Distribute the weight. Not to mention, Saxony is powerful enough to boost the magic.”
Wesley pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine,” he said. “But if we start falling to our deaths, then it’s your hand I’m letting go of.”
“I’d thank you for it.”
Tavia reached into her pocket to dig out the stolen hover charms and dropped them, one by one, into Wesley’s outstretched palms.
The four of them gathered by the new hole in the building and looked down to the city streets that concreted miles below. Wesley palmed the stolen magic contemplatively, letting it coat his skin.
He closed his eyes and stretched out his hand for them to form a link.
Saxony’s face wrinkled in disgust at the prospect and though Wesley couldn’t have seen, he smirked as though he had.
Tavia eyed him, trying to remember the last time she held his hand.
It had been so long since they’d done anything but bait each other that she struggled to remember the times of tenderness and warmth. Not that a memory of his skin would matter—Tavia imagined the years of killing had probably roughened his hands quite a bit.
In fact, she hoped Wesley had a callous for every life he’d taken.
When nobody stepped forward, Karam took Wesley’s hand. She waited a moment, scratched her teeth hard across her bottom lip, and then snatched Saxony’s, too. Saxony rolled her shoulder as if the force had nearly loosed it from its socket.
Tavia turned to survey the mess they were going to leave. The room was in chaos, everything spilled out onto the floor and ripped from the walls and stained in glass and blood. Even the floorboards had splintered upward to knifepoints, revealing the darkness beneath.
Except, not all of it was darkness.
There was something strange about the way the floor jutted out in odd crisscrosses. Something that was glistening underneath, calling to her like a song.
“Tavia.”
She looked back over her shoulder to Wesley. His eyes were still closed, right hand empty where hers should have been. Wesley was absorbing the magic, keeping focus so that he could let the hover charm flow evenly between them all. Tavia noticed his dark skin taking on a silver sheen as he forced the charm to channel in and out of himself.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Tavia didn’t answer, but she did smile.
From her new vantage point, she could see it clearly. Hidden under the floor, with red flashing on the lock like a beacon.
A hidden safe.
Magic the consort had collected and stashed from each of her dirty deals.
There were so many rumors about those safes that it had become a bit of a busking legend, and too many times Tavia had imagined finding one of them and using the power to take her freedom by force.
She beelined for the safe just as a series of explosive pops rattled the room.
Tavia crouched to her knees and covered her head like the whole building might just come crashing down.
“It’s the consort’s guards,” Wesley said. “They can’t use magic to get in now that the doorway’s smashed, so they’re breaking their way through. We need to go.”
“Not yet,” Tavia said.
She pulled away the pieces of floor that had been loosed by the explosion. Sure enough, the safe was there. A small metallic thing built into the floor, not much wider than a briefcase.
But Tavia knew better than anyone how many charms could fit inside a briefcase.
“It’s the consort’s safe,” she called out. “I can crack it. We need the firepower.”
“I’m a Crafter,” Saxony said. “I am your firepower.”
“Everyone knows that the consort has magic not even in circulation,” Tavia said. “Can you imagine what she had access to? The secrets of Wrenyal. Things nobody outside Volo has even heard of. It’s a gold mine of magic.”
The guards crashed against the doorway and Tavia reached into her pocket, still crouched on the floor. She pulled out a small magnet.
“You have a magical magnet?” Karam asked.
Wesley shoved a hand into his pocket. “And yet only three hover charms.”
Tavia ignored him and pressed the magnet against the safe.
The doorway shook as the guards raged on, small pieces of debris crumbling to the floor. Sooner or later, they were going to rip another hole in the building.
The magnet fixed onto the lock.
Tavia closed her eyes, letting the combinations flow through her as the magic did its work. Code flashed across her mind, lines of it screaming out to her. Numbers she couldn’t even count to crawled along her vision. It made her want to scratch her own eyes out.
Then a click sounded.
The first combination unlocked.
“Get a move on,” Wesley said.
Tavia moved the magnet down the strip, letting the magic tap into the next combination.
In a safe like this, there couldn’t be more than five.
“I’ve nearly got it.” Tavia squeezed her eyes shut. “Just a few more minutes.”
“We don’t have a few minutes!” Saxony said. “Tavia, come on!”
Every word she spoke was punctured by a crescendo of bangs from the guards.
Another click. Two down.
There was no way Tavia was leaving this room without getting her hands on the consort’s magic. If the Kingpin had an army of Crafters, the least they needed were a few surprises.
“Just go without me,” Tavia said, waving them off.
“We’re not leaving you!” Saxony said.
“You want us to let you get killed?” Wesley asked.
The banging grew louder.
Tavia gestured to the consort. “We get people killed all the time,” she said. “Just give me the third hover charm and I’ll catch up. Make sure the buskers are ready to go as soon as I get there.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Wesley said.
Tavia pulled the magnet away. She was almost certain that Wesley was going to yank her to her feet and throw her out of the window before he gave in. He had that look in his eyes that he a
lways got before tearing a busker a new one. Instead, he let out a curse—and not the magical kind—then thrust an open palm. The sheen from his hands gathered into the center and a small bead formed atop his skin.
Wesley chucked the charm at Tavia and she caught it with a lopsided grin.
He was trusting her to get the job done.
“You better get to the train tracks within an hour,” Wesley said. “Or we’re leaving.”
He linked hands with the others and the three of them stepped backward, out into the air, floating above the city they were trying to save.
“Don’t get yourself killed,” Saxony said. “I’ll be pissed.”
“Get going before that charm wears off and you plummet to your deaths!” Tavia yelled, her hands buried in the floorboards. “I don’t want to step on you on my way out.”
She turned her focus back to the safe and she could just about hear the cogs churning inside, clicking with each combination. Just one more minute.
She fingered the magnet and felt the fourth combination click into place, but the rush of success was followed by a final explosive roar.
The wall that had kept them safe came crumbling down. The guards burst through the doorway, guns and magic. Charms were lassoed to their belts and pistols were primed in their hands and murder was all over their somber faces. Tavia crouched low, hidden behind the bar, while Wesley and the others floated in midair, hands still linked.
Wesley’s eyes snapped to Tavia’s, and in a blink his face hardened. He stepped back into the building, dragging Karam and Saxony with him, but the moment their feet touched the broken ground, the guards opened fire.
There were too many shots to count, but only one that mattered.
Karam’s shoulder whipped back.
The bullet tore into her chest, blood splattering on the wall beside her. She staggered from the impact, one foot stumbling out of the building.
And then she fell.
In a blink, Karam careened out of the tower, taking Wesley and Saxony down with her.
And leaving Tavia to the guards.
GETTING SHOT HURT. FALLING to your death from over a thousand feet hurt a little more.
Karam’s face scraped against the concrete, bones crumbling like pastries as the ground slammed into her. And that was what it felt like—not her crashing to the earth, but the earth crashing into her.
The magic slowed their fall, which was handy, since Karam didn’t think dying would suit her. And if she did die, she really didn’t want to do it outside of the consort’s headquarters holding Wesley’s hand. But, though the so-called hover charm had taken the speed off their descent and Saxony’s magic had broken their fall somewhat, Karam still felt like the fall had broken her face.
“Get up,” Karam said. “We have to get to the tracks.”
Wesley rubbed his neck and when he pulled his hand away, it was wet with blood. “Give me a minute,” he said. “It’s my first time jumping from a building.”
He smoothed the dust off his clothes ruefully.
“I really liked this suit.”
“Karam, are you okay?” Saxony asked.
She was standing taller than them, looking mostly unharmed, except for a small scratch across her cheek, but even that had begun to heal.
Either Crafters were invincible, or Saxony had used most of her magic to keep her own collision to a minimum.
Karam stood, grabbing her shoulder where the bullet hit. She wasn’t bleeding as much as she would have if it clipped an artery, and she wasn’t as dead as she would have been if it clipped her heart, so she counted herself lucky.
“Let’s split up,” Wesley said. “Divide their attention and rendezvous with the rest of the buskers in an hour like we agreed.”
“What about Tavia?” Saxony asked. “We can’t just leave her.”
“She told us to,” Karam said. “We cannot save her. There is no way back into the building now that it is locked down.”
Wesley looked up. Even from this far they could hear gunshots and see the bursts of light from the bullets scatter like dozens of tiny blinking suns.
“Tavia can take care of herself,” Wesley said. “She has enough magic to protect her. She’ll be okay.”
“That’s crap,” Saxony all but spat. “You won’t really leave her behind.”
Karam could see something on the cusp of Wesley’s face, a slight smear of humanity that was fighting to take hold. If any of them were righteous or good or even half-loyal, they would have tried, somehow, to go back up to that building and tried, even in vain, to rescue her.
Wesley readjusted his cuff links.
The humanity in him quickly faded.
“Anyone can get left behind,” he said.
Because not a one of them was truly righteous or good or even half-loyal.
NEARLY AN hour after Karam had split from the others, she approached the old train tracks. Though she’d lost the guards in the lower towns, she’d traveled through alleys and city nooks to be sure they didn’t catch her trace.
The old tracks were rugged, to say the least.
Since the expansion of the floating railways across the realms, they had become nothing more than a gimmick for tourists with little better to do. They were a museum to the past, ferreting visitors from one place to the next in guided tours that could take days.
When Karam spotted their train, she sucked in a breath and watched the black smoke bellow into the air.
It was bronzed from cold and age, with a plow attached haphazardly to the front, ready to clear snow from the lines, and large twin tracks that hid the wheels in a triangular arc. Its corroded face was like a spear, guns peeking from every window like cannons. Perhaps it was clunky, but it seemed to have enough firepower to wipe out a small city. Or a very large Kingpin.
Wesley’s fifty chosen buskers meandered pitifully around the train. Some sat atop, nearly obscured by the smoke, throwing trick bags at one another and laughing loud enough that they may as well have sent up a flare for their location.
If this was the sorry state of their army, Karam was going to have to get to grips with her own mortality pretty soon. There was little chance of her doing the legend of her family and the Rekhi d’Rihsni justice with these people for soldiers.
Karam stepped onto the tracks, glancing around the other side to see if Saxony was anywhere in sight.
Nothing.
Then again, Wesley, for all his bravado about leaving anyone behind, was also nowhere to be seen.
Only one busker idled, his back to Karam, cupping a small bat in his hands. He leaned down to whisper something in the creature’s ear.
It was what the Uskhanyans called a delg bat. The daytime messenger. Because it was not nocturnal like the rest of its species, but a creature of magic that slept only in the briefest moments of twilight.
The creature cried in acknowledgment before leaping from the busker’s fingers and flying hastily out of view.
The busker turned.
Karam stared.
Falk.
The man Tavia liked to call Wesley’s weasel. Up close, Karam could see why.
“What are you doing?” Karam asked him. “Wesley told you to send a bat right now?”
Who was he spiriting messages to at a time like this?
“We cannot trust anyone,” Karam said. “And you will give away our location with that thing, if the rest of your comrades have not already.”
Falk opened his mouth to make some sort of an excuse, but the next voice Karam heard was not his. It was a smooth Rishiyat drawl that carried the hint of a smile.
“Relax,” Saxony said. “He’s just doing what he’s told.”
Karam spun to find her leaning against the front of the train, eyes sparking almost playfully. A bead of sweat readied to drip from her collarbone, and Karam could make out a thin silver line from one of her Crafter staves peeking through her shirt.
“Nice of you to show up by the way,” Saxony said. “One more mi
nute and I could have been worried.”
Karam ignored her. “We cannot be sending bats right now.”
Saxony only shrugged. “You know what the underboss is like.”
“So he has you following orders too?”
Saxony’s smile flickered, as if the very idea were an insult. “Wesley doesn’t order me to do anything,” she said.
“Good for you.”
Karam stepped back across the tracks, making for the front cab of the train.
Saxony meandered after her. “You know, if you need some help relaxing, then I’m happy to oblige,” she said playfully.
This didn’t seem like a time for jokes, but that was always when Saxony most liked to make them.
“This is not the Crook and I am not ordering a Brandy,” Karam said. “Do not be sleazy.”
“If that’s your definition of sleazy, then stay out of the Crook,” Saxony said.
Karam crossed her arms over her chest.
She may have brought it up, but the last thing she wanted to talk about with Saxony was the Crook.
Some people aren’t made to be happy, Saxony had said just two months before, under the lights of the old clock tower. She hadn’t been sure if Saxony was talking about Karam or herself, but either way, it hurt.
Either way, nobody deserved to be dumped under a disco ball.
“Wesley thinks that just because he is in Creije that he is untouchable,” Karam said. “He needs to know that we cannot relax our guard and that we must—”
Saxony grabbed her hand.
Karam stopped walking.
Her fingers curled instinctively around Saxony’s and her breath got caught somewhere in her throat.
“I told you not to worry,” Saxony said.
But the truth was, Karam worried all the time.
She worried that she would never live up to her family’s legacy and that Ashwood would find Saxony and see her as just another shiny new brick to build his empire.
It was in Karam’s blood to make sure that didn’t happen.
Back in her realm, people worshipped Crafters as holy conduits of the Indescribable God, and Karam’s family had spent generations protecting them. Her grandparents were part of the Rekhi d’Rihsni. They lived as sacred warriors and died trying to save true magic.
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