Into The Crooked Place

by Alexandra Christo

  It was why Karam had grown up wanting to be a fighter, rather than teaching at temple like her parents. They thought peace was the new way, but Karam couldn’t fathom such a reality. She and her friend Arjun were just kids when they vowed to bring back the Rekhi d’Rihsni and deliver war to the Kingpins. They played warriors together, with Karam vowing to storm castles and Arjun promising to bring them down alongside her.

  Karam left her realm not just because of her parents, but because she and Arjun decided that Uskhanya was where she could best learn to be a warrior worthy of the sacred cause. Protecting Saxony was literally her birthright.

  Some days, it even struck Karam that part of her connection to Saxony might be because of that legacy. She worried that the thirst to be near her might be misplaced duty.

  Other days, when Saxony would merely glance at her, for a second or less, and the realms felt like they might explode, Karam knew that wasn’t possible.

  Maybe she and Saxony were tied by destiny, but Karam was sure she had chosen that destiny. And she would again, in any other life.

  “I am trying to keep us alive,” Karam said now. “Worrying is what does that.”

  Saxony smiled. “No matter what happens, I’ll protect you.”

  Karam almost snorted, as though she would ever be the one who needed protecting, but before she could catch her breath for long enough to come up with a reply, Wesley emerged from the train.

  He stared at their entwined hands and Karam quickly pulled her grip from Saxony’s. It seemed odd to be affectionate in front of her boss. In front of the person who had helped her become a warrior.

  “Let’s not make a habit of cutting things so tight,” Wesley said.

  Karam supposed that was his way of being glad she’d arrived safely.

  “I did not realize Falk was one of the buskers we chose,” she said.

  “He’s not.” Wesley sat on the train steps. “He’s our driver until we reach the realm of Wrenyal. Since Schulze wasn’t going to provide a civilian, I had to go with the only guy I know who can work the old trains. Falk’s obsessed with old tech. Besides, he’s helping me on a little side-project. He’s one of us.”

  Karam held back her comments on that.

  If Tavia were here, she would have made them for her, saying something awful that Karam would have agreed with. Silently, of course, because Tavia’s ego didn’t need feeding.

  “We should get going,” Karam said. “Since we are all here.”

  “We’re not all here,” Saxony said.

  Wesley adjusted his tie. “No, we’re not.”

  “You both want to wait for Tavia?”

  “I’m a man of my word,” Wesley said. “I promised an hour, so we wait an hour. Time’s not up yet.”

  Karam expected this from Saxony, because her odd friendship with Tavia was one of the few familiarities she had in Creije. But Wesley—hei reb—Wesley Thornton Walcott of all people. The man whose mere name seemed to be made of the same magic he sold, practically resolute as he checked their lives against Tavia’s.

  Karam often thought Wesley was as much a myth of Creije as he was the master of it, but when it came to Tavia, sometimes that myth really was nothing more than a man.

  “The consort’s guards could be here any minute,” Karam said.

  “And so could Tavia,” Wesley countered.

  Karam wasn’t sure how he could be optimistic. “The consort’s people will try and check all routes out of the city and it is only a matter of time before they think to look at this one. We cannot risk all of that on the hopes of a dead girl.”

  It was not kind, but it was true. The chances of Tavia having survived an assault from the consort’s guards were slim. Tavia was smart, not bulletproof.

  Wesley didn’t flinch. “Even the dead deserve five minutes,” he said.

  He turned to the buskers meandering around the train and with just one look they promptly stopped throwing tricks at one another and threw their cigarettes to the ground. They were as straight as soldiers, ready to walk into battle.

  “Why are you all staring at me like we’re on a date?” Wesley asked. “Make yourselves useful.”

  “How so, sir?” one of the buskers asked.

  “I don’t care. Just do something. Shoot someone. Fire-gates, shoot each other for all I care.”

  “Or,” Saxony said, “shoot them.”

  She pointed to the warehouse in the distance and, as if on cue, a choir of bullets exploded against the train’s smoke box.

  The consort’s guards rushed toward them with more weaponry than Karam had ever seen. And they weren’t alone.

  There were two dozen buskers by their side. Ones Wesley hadn’t trusted enough to invite along. They threw charms at the side of the train like they were trying to score points in a game of darts.

  They weren’t afraid of the amityguards seeing, or being thrown into cells. These people were out for blood.

  “Disloyal bastards,” Wesley said. “You kill one consort and everyone loses their minds.”

  He pulled his gun out and aimed a shot.

  In the distance a busker fell.

  Karam hated to admit how good his aim was, but spirits damn.

  “I told you to shoot someone!” Wesley yelled. “Don’t make me repeat myself!”

  In an instant, the train opened fire.

  Their army was only fifty strong, but each and every one of them had a gun and magic. Bullets exploded from the train windows where the buskers took aim. Those on the ground whipped rifles and pistols out from places Karam didn’t even know someone could hide a gun.

  And the magic.

  Hei reb, there was magic everywhere.

  Buskers stood on top of the train and threw back their arms in wide arches, attacking with everything from blinding trick bags to charms that seemed to melt the skin off the guards’ faces.

  Karam ducked and rolled under the train and to the other side, sheltering from the stream of bullets. She couldn’t do much at this range. She needed something to stab or hit or kick. She’d never relied on guns to fight before.

  Karam tuned to Wesley, who had joined her on the other side. His foot was nooked in the train window and he perched over the roof, firing bullets with one hand and charm after charm with his other.

  It was as if he had a lever under his sleeve, shooting them out with as much speed as the bullets. They imploded at the guards’ feet, shot ice through their hearts, catapulted others what seemed like a mile back.

  A bullet smashed through the window by Karam’s head.

  Saxony screamed her name.

  And suddenly Saxony was on the roof with dozens of buskers, skin newly ablaze, turning from brown to molten yellow.

  Saxony didn’t just hold fire in her hands, her hands were made of fire itself. She propelled them backward and then lurched ahead like she was pushing the flame out of her soul.

  It spat across the dirt and engulfed a row of the guards.

  The buskers around her followed suit, throwing fire charms like cannons at their enemies. Some screamed in victory, others screamed in a cry of agony before their bodies fell to the ground like raindrops.

  One. Two.

  “We must get the train moving!” Karam yelled.

  Wesley, suit still smooth as he aimed another shot, said, “I don’t remember giving you permission to order my people around.”

  Karam didn’t know what to make of that.

  Surely he wasn’t still thinking about Tavia? Even if she hadn’t died back there—and that was a big if—there was no way she could get past their attackers to board the train. And there was no way they could afford to wait for her to try.

  “She’s right!” Saxony yelled above the roar of her fire. “Your arrogance will get us killed.”

  “Better my arrogance than your disloyalty.”

  Saxony heaved another ball of flame in her hands. “Tavia wouldn’t want us to die for her. And where was your loyalty when you abandoned her in the firs
t place?”

  Wesley started to pull himself up onto the roof and Karam could smell the magic on him as much as she could see it in Saxony. A constant power struggle between them. But Karam wasn’t going to gamble her life on pride, no matter whose it was.

  She reached out to grab Wesley.

  “Sir,” she said. “Anyone can get left behind.”

  Wesley shook his arm from hers, outraged at the move, but the sound of his own words repeated back gave Wesley pause. His eyes pulsed as he weighed any honor he might have with their chances of survival.

  Another busker tumbled from the rooftop and fell to the floor beside them, spitting up dirt as he landed.

  With a snarl Wesley let off a shot that took down a guard trying to board the back of the train, and said, “Someone get this pile of junk moving!”

  It didn’t take long for Falk to make the train jerk and rumble under their feet. Their buskers were still firing—guns and cannons and charms—as the train churned and sputtered.

  Those not already on board jumped in through the doorways or clung onto the open windows. Karam could count three bodies on the ground, but she didn’t have time to dwell on their losses once a few of the guards jumped on board too, trying their luck as the train broke away.

  When seven filtered into the cabin Karam was in, she smiled.

  Even with a bullet rammed in her shoulder, this would be a piece of cake.

  She took the first three in seconds and the other four gathered around her. The buskers aboard were still firing their magic as the train sped out of the station, but this was Karam’s chance to fight.

  She’d stood back and watched them get attacked without being able to lift a hand.

  Now she wanted retribution.

  Karam seized the fingers of the guard closest to her right, bending them back until he cowered on his knees. In a swift movement, she cut her knife across his neck and leaped over his lifeless body to plunge toward the second. It only took one well-placed kick to the stomach for the guard to fall.

  Never one to miss an opportunity, Karam rolled over the woman’s back to crack her foot against the third’s face. Then turned to slice her blade across the second’s spine.

  Karam cut through the guards like they were trees, feeling their blood soak her lips and edge under her fingernails.

  When she was finished, she was aware of how she must have looked, painted in her kill. The buskers in the cab whispered and stepped back, Karam’s heavy breathing like a roar.

  Wesley clapped as he stepped over the altar of bodies.

  “You never get rusty,” he said. “Couldn’t ask for a better bodyguard. Remind me to give you a raise.”

  Karam wiped the blood and sweat from her forehead and leaned out the window.

  Saxony was still on the roof. Her head tipped back, gathering wind in her grasp, as Falk chugged the train from the station and propelled them onward.

  It was like Saxony held the world in her hands, and when she threw her head forward, her eyes were blanketed white.

  Karam’s spine went rigid.

  There was so much magic inside Saxony and she’d never let Karam see it clearly before now. It commanded her and suddenly Karam realized that the magic wasn’t just part of Saxony, or something she used like Wesley and Tavia did.

  Saxony was the magic.

  Crafters weren’t made from skin and bone like the rest of them. They were forged from spells.

  A burst of light hit the old station, where guards were still attacking at long range, and Karam swiveled, spying a figure on the roof of a nearby warehouse, throwing magic like bread for birds. Flashes and flashes of light until the guards were on their knees, blinded, and some were thrown high enough into the air for Karam not to see them come back down.

  The figure turned and Karam leaned farther out the window, squinting. But the train was traveling too fast and night had descended. The figure backed up a few steps, teetering on the edge of the warehouse, and then made a run for it.

  “Impossible,” Karam said.

  The figure leaped from the building.

  Karam’s jaw dropped.

  Rather than fall they floated, running through the air like it was road.

  Karam blinked and turned to look at the others, to make sure she wasn’t losing her mind. That she hadn’t, perhaps, gotten blood poisoning from that bullet. But they were staring too, watching the strange figure run through the air and toward them.

  It was only when they crashed onto the roof beside Saxony with a flourish that Karam could make out their ally’s smarmy face.

  Tavia stood, brushed off her trousers, and peered down at the faces that gawked from the windows.

  “Leaving so soon?” she asked.

  WESLEY HADN’T SEEN THE sun in two days.

  The train was dimly lit so they could make out each other’s faces during the day and not be too disturbed to sleep during the night. Or what they thought was night.

  Outside the windows was nothing but darkness, peppered only by flashes of light that punctured through the gravel and concrete of the underground tunnels they were now inside, before filtering down to them. But the train passed by so quickly, the glimpses of day never offered much of a reprieve.

  Wesley supposed it was not the worst thing.

  He lived most of his life in the shadows, keeping company with dark magic and darker people, and the tunnels were the safest way to travel, with a clear route all the way to Wrenyal.

  Falk counted the hours for them, proclaiming when it was dusk and when it was dawn like an announcer, using his wristwatch to steer Wesley and their makeshift army into sleep, or let them know it was time to wake or eat or meander.

  They’d lost nearly half a dozen buskers back in Creije. The remaining walked through the days with sharp eyes and quick hands, as though another attack could come at any time.

  It had been two days and they still had three to go until they reached the Wrenyi realm, which was outside Ashwood’s reach and would allow them safe haven.

  Three more days of waiting.

  “Our biggest problem is that we do not have the element of surprise,” Karam said. “The shadow moon is less than a month away and without enough time to prepare, we will fail.”

  “You’re just a bundle of positivity, aren’t you?” Tavia said. “Tell us more about how the future is dark and we’re all going to get killed by the Kingpin.”

  “Not you,” Karam said. “I am going to kill you myself.”

  Saxony snorted. “You two have issues.”

  “I will not be part of a suicide mission,” Karam said.

  “Would it be easier if I didn’t give you a choice?” Wesley asked. “I could force you, but I think it would be easier to just pay you instead. Double your usual rate should do it.”

  “I was not aware I had a usual rate for getting myself killed,” Karam said. “Or for saving the realms.”

  Wesley nearly recoiled. “We’re saving a place I have great stakes in. Don’t make out like I’m a good guy. It’s disheartening.”

  “Nobody is going to mistake you for a good guy in that suit,” Tavia said. “You look like a gangster threw up on you.”

  Wesley looked indifferent. “But a very high-end gangster.”

  He sat back. The four of them were gathered in the main carriage, which Wesley supposed would have been first-class once upon a time, only now the windows were shot out and the cold from the tunnels battered through.

  They had been plotting for the entirety of the two days and Karam continued to discuss strategy at excruciating length.

  Wesley’s buskers slept and ate and used trick bags to pull pranks on each other to pass the time and ease the rigid tension impending death brought. They played cards and romanced and picked fights until something or someone ended up broken.

  And all the while, Wesley did nothing but plan.

  It was so incredibly tedious.

  Still, he took note of what Karam and Saxony were saying, and
offered solutions when he could. He glowered when they said something awful about him and smirked when they said something awful to each other. He was aware of every word they said and every move they made.

  But mostly, Wesley was aware of Tavia, sitting beside him, still smelling of magic and gunpowder.

  She had pouches tied to her belt, brimming with the stolen charms she hadn’t let him take inventory of. To have it all so close and be unable to touch it was torture, but Wesley owed Tavia one. Or two, if they were counting her help at the train station.

  Not that Wesley needed anyone’s help.

  Still, he liked hearing Tavia talk about fighting off the consort’s guards with blinding charms and how, when she jumped from the top of the headquarters, the ground absorbed her like a sponge and then spat her back up.

  How she felt like she could run through the wind and toward their train forever.

  He liked how Tavia smiled when she told them that story. Wesley hadn’t seen her smile like that in years.

  But in the moments outside those small respites, he felt like a tiger in a cage. Like one of those zoo animals, whose claws were filed down while people stared from behind the safety of bars.

  He was a predator with no prey.

  Two days of only talking.

  It was like his own personal fire-gate.

  “We don’t need surprise,” Saxony said. “The Kingpin won’t run from a fight.”

  He’ll be waiting for you. And he won’t be alone.

  Wesley loosened his tie.

  He wouldn’t listen to that voice and he wouldn’t think about it.

  “The Kingpin will have a militia. Fifty buskers will not change things,” Karam said.

  Wesley set his tie on the table. “We don’t even have fifty anymore.”

  And it still stung.

  But letting people die is what you do best.

  “We could have the biggest army in the realms and still lose,” Wesley said. “It’s not bodies we need, it’s magic. The Kingpin is one of the most powerful people alive, and now that he has Crafters under his thumb we have to even the playing field.”

  “We’re not going to Rishiya,” Saxony said. “I’m not taking you to my family.”