Into The Crooked Place

by Alexandra Christo

  Her magic felt so staggeringly awake.

  And then, as if from the wind itself, came her grandma’s voice.

  “You are safe.”

  Amja’s dark metallic hair was braided down the length of her spine, and though her smile was soft, her silver eyes were hard and gleaming. She wore a white dress that moved with the wind and her voice sounded like it was made from liquid or magic or both.

  The entire Rishiyat Kin stood with her.

  A family.

  An army.

  It occurred to Saxony then that her grandma looked like a warrior. That she looked like a Liege, even though she wasn’t.

  “Is this a dream?” Saxony asked. “How am I here?”

  “We were worried for you,” Amja said. “We felt it when you used the dark magics and risked cursing us all. The heavens cried that day and our power felt like lead in our veins.”

  Saxony tried not to bow her head in shame. She knew invading Eirini’s mind was a risk, but she had stupidly hoped that the Many Gods would spare her Kin any more pain.

  “Amja, it was the only way. You don’t understand—”

  “We understand you are with an underboss,” she said. “He has you in his clutches.”

  She reached out and took Saxony’s hand.

  “You have strayed, just like I feared, and you have put us all in danger.”

  Saxony drew in a breath.

  “I’m doing this for us, Amja,” she said. “For Zekia. That elixir I told you about is new magic and Dante Ashwood has Crafters imprisoned. I think Zekia is one of them. Wesley and the others are going to help me find her.”

  “Impossible!” her amja shouted.

  Behind her, the Kin stirred.

  Saxony felt the might of them.

  Their hurt and their anger. They mourned Zekia as much as she did. Kins were bound by something deeper than blood and the Liege was the string that connected the force inside them all. With Zekia gone, it was like they had lost part of themselves.

  They wanted her back, the same as Saxony. They just didn’t trust that it was possible.

  “It’s true,” Saxony said. “Wesley and the others will help me save her.”

  “Filthy lies to trap you like they once tried to trap us all in the war,” Amja spat. “They can never be trusted. All they want is to take our magic and use our powers for their gain.”

  “You’re wrong,” Saxony said. “You don’t know everything, Amja.”

  You don’t know Karam, she wanted to say. The fact that her beautiful warrior had a sacred duty to protect Crafters. Or that even if she didn’t, she’d still go to the ends of the realms to protect Saxony.

  Amja didn’t know that good people could exist in Creije, or anywhere outside of their Kin. The war had left so many scars on her. She didn’t know that not everyone could be more than simply good or evil. That there were people like Tavia, who was Wesley’s best busker and yet the best friend she’d ever had.

  “I promise that I can bring Zekia back,” Saxony said. “I can fix our family. We have an army of buskers and right now we’re on our way to gather the Grankan Kin to help fight Ashwood. When we reach his fortress, I’ll put an end to him and rescue Zekia.”

  “You will get yourself killed trying,” Amja said. “His power is too great. You forget that I have seen his past. I was there when the war broke out.”

  Saxony hadn’t forgotten. She never could.

  “Even if your power could match his, those buskers cannot be trusted. The underboss of Creije cannot be trusted,” Amja urged. “You should kill him before he kills you. He is a snake, waiting for the right moment to strike. Eliminating him is the only victory we can hope for.”

  An awful feeling lodged in the pit of Saxony’s stomach.

  It wasn’t like she truly intended to be Wesley’s ally, or let him take the Kingpin’s place at the helm of the Uskhanyan magic trade. But to kill him now?

  To murder him in front of everyone?

  In front of Tavia?

  There were dozens of buskers aboard the train and they would turn on her in an instant, with her closest friend spearheading their rage. And Many Gods knew how Karam would act if Saxony murdered someone in the holy land. If she killed someone who was helping them, just because she could.

  Just because her grandma told her to.

  “Wesley is on my side,” Saxony said. “If the time comes when that changes, I’ll deal with him. But until then, I need his help.”

  “He must die,” Amja said again. “Before he can betray you. Do not let him enchant you. That boy will bring war and death. It is his destiny. One look at his face and you must see that.”

  Saxony dropped her grandma’s hands.

  She was willing to kill for survival, when it was necessary, but taking Wesley’s life right now was neither of those things. And it was certainly not destiny.

  Besides, Saxony didn’t trust people on their faces, because faces lied and were rarely laid bare, always coated in a thin layer of bullshit. Instead, Saxony knew people by their sense. The feel of them. How her insides twisted and settled in their presence.

  Like how she knew Karam because of the way her organs jolted suddenly whenever they touched. Which told her that Karam was for sure a good person beneath the black eyes. Or, at least, too good for her.

  And Saxony knew Wesley by the way her fingers went cold at the tips and she got a mighty bad case of heartburn that could never settle without a cup of ginger root. Which told her that he was probably half as good as he was bad. That he probably hadn’t decided which one was more profitable yet.

  “You need to let me go,” Saxony said. “I have to get back. I think we were being attacked.”

  Amja’s silver eyes sparked with something Saxony hadn’t seen before. An anger, perhaps at her defiance, because Saxony had never gone against her grandma’s wishes or even spoken out of turn.

  “Saxony,” her amja said. Her voice was soft and calm. Too level to mean it. “I will not lose a third grandchild and I will not let you risk your life for a fool’s errand. With Zekia gone, our Kin’s safety falls to me. I will protect you at any cost.”

  “Enough, Amja!” Saxony shouted. “Let me out of here right now. I need to help my friends.”

  The desperate urge to leave rose up in Saxony’s stomach like a sickness. She heard those gunshots echoing in her mind again and pictured Karam running toward her. Being in this dream place was wrong and if Saxony didn’t go soon, then she knew something awful would happen. Or perhaps something awful already had.

  “Kill the underboss and return to us,” Amja pleaded.

  “I’m not a murderer,” Saxony said, looking up to the skies in the hopes that the enchantment would hear and break her grandma’s spell. Pull her out of this replica world.

  She closed her eyes, willing the forest to come back and for her to be in Granka, with Karam.

  “Saxony.”

  Amja’s voice was distant.

  No longer the wind, but an echo of it. A fading hand stretching out to Saxony, only she was suddenly too far.

  The sky groaned and Saxony reached up to touch the back of her head. It came away wet. Blood pooled into the lines of her hands. The distance was no longer peaceful; the quiet lull of Rishiya and its farms were filled with screaming.

  Saxony couldn’t smell the orange trees anymore, but she could smell gunpowder.

  She could smell smoke and the earthy dirt of trees.

  Eyes closed, Saxony screamed into the darkness. “I’m not a murderer!”

  “Now that’s a crying shame,” someone said.

  Not her grandma or a member of the Kin, but a voice she recognized nonetheless. A gravelly Creijen tilt. A not-so-thinly-veiled arrogance.

  Wesley.

  Saxony opened her eyes and found herself back inside the forest of Granka. She felt the leaves and soil beneath her palms and smelled spice in the air.

  The underboss stood in front of her, scowling.

  His sui
t was marred by blood and earth, and beside him a breathless Tavia pocketed knife after knife inside the slits of her clothes and shoes, and then bent down to crouch beside Saxony.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Saxony nodded, but she wasn’t sure it was true.

  The Grankan Crafters surrounded them like warriors.

  They were dressed in brightly colored garments that hung breezily from their bodies. Some wore shirts, others did not, and their staves reflected gold in the sunlight over their brown skin. The men wore vibrant colors around their heads and the women had the kind of ornate jewelry Saxony had only ever seen on Karam.

  Being around them, Saxony felt an immediate sense of peace and kinship. She could almost imagine a time before the War of Ages had sent them all into hiding. A time when they weren’t used as currency, before Kingpins and crooks, where magic roamed free and Crafters were seen as holy across the realms.

  Where none of them had to be scared or watch the people they loved die.

  The Grankan Crafters looked fearless and deadly, not in the least because they were surrounded by bodies.

  On the floor around them were a dozen dead. Not the Crafters, but strange enemies that had descended at the exact moment Saxony’s grandma trapped her in that memory.

  Saxony bit her lip.

  “Where is—”

  “I am here,” Karam said, as though reading Saxony’s mind.

  Saxony followed her voice and a few Crafters parted way to reveal Karam sitting on the ground, slouched against a tree in a near mirror of Saxony.

  Her face was as bruised as usual, though a little muddier. But it was her arm, slung over her waist and wet with blood that made Saxony’s jaw tense.

  Karam was either stabbed or shot, and all the while Saxony was useless to help. She was getting really sick of that feeling.

  Tavia placed a hand on Saxony’s shoulder to pull her to her feet and with a grimace Saxony stood.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You decided to take a nap and we got ambushed,” Wesley said.

  “I wasn’t napping, I was—”

  Saxony broke off. She wasn’t quite sure what to say.

  I was transported to a memory by my grandma, where she tried to convince me to kill you and run back home to Rishiya didn’t quite have a ring of sanity to it.

  “I think the Kingpin was trying to get in my head,” she lied.

  Wesley narrowed his eyes and she could see the suspicion, the distrust so open on his face. “How so?”

  Saxony swallowed. “I don’t remember much,” she said. “Just the feeling of dark magic.”

  Tavia raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

  “Or sleeping,” Wesley said.

  “She hit her head hard when she flew against that tree,” Tavia agreed.

  Saxony wished she had the strength to throw a fireball at them.

  “It was mind games,” she said, which wasn’t technically a lie. “The Kingpin was trying to get me over to his side. Making false promises for if I turned against you.”

  “That would explain the attack,” Wesley said. “Divide and conquer. The Kingpin sends people in to distract us and then goes after our resident Crafter.”

  Saxony gestured to the fallen enemies around them. “They were with the Kingpin?”

  Tavia nodded. “Seems so. But he only sent twelve, so they didn’t stand a chance against us all. Thankfully Ashwood doesn’t have many people in Granka, but the bastard still knew where we were.”

  “Maybe he guessed because of Karam’s family,” Falk said. “There ain’t a way he could know our route otherwise.”

  “No,” Wesley said, turning to him with a thinly veiled scowl. “I suppose there isn’t.”

  “Either way, it is a good thing we were here to save you,” one of the Crafters said.

  He was younger than Saxony, but broadly built with wide shoulders and a hard edge to his boyish face, as though it had been beaten into strength. His knuckles were bloody and fisted around a sword with four hooked blades that looked like it had seen its share of battle.

  Wesley rolled his eyes and hitched his gun back into his belt. “I didn’t need saving,” he said.

  The Crafter rolled his eyes right back. “The Uskhanyan have an odd way of saying thank you. I expect you to pay this life debt. If I am ever at the wrong end of a gun, you can take the bullet in my place.”

  Wesley looked affronted. “I’d rather pull the trigger.”

  “Arjun,” Karam said, addressing the Crafter.

  He turned to her and his lips twitched like he was trying to swallow something bitter. A hard silence passed between them.

  “We are grateful,” Karam said.

  “You are slow,” he said back.

  He had the same severe gravel to his voice that Karam did, like they were two sides of a single coin.

  This was the childhood friend she had left behind; someone who knew parts of her that Saxony hadn’t yet uncovered. And he didn’t seem too pleased about those parts.

  “It looks as though Creije is not the best place to study combat after all,” he said.

  There was nothing lighthearted about the dig, but Karam smirked, biting down on the unpleasant retort Saxony could see threatening to spill out.

  “If you like, I will come over there and show you just what I learned on the streets of Creije,” Karam said.

  She tried to stand and then sucked in a breath, clutching her side tighter.

  Saxony winced.

  “They did not teach you how to stand in Creije then,” Arjun said. He turned to Saxony. “You should heal her. We cannot spill blood near the holy temple and our Liege is waiting.”

  “Your concern warms my heart,” Karam said.

  Saxony walked toward her.

  She tried her hardest not to look at the dead, but her eyes were drawn to their faces. To the shock and surprise painted on each of them, as though victory had been the only outcome they had considered.

  They were dressed in dark blue, arms exposed at the shoulders, hands outstretched and clinging to swords or guns or trick bags. They all bore a symbol on their wrists, rigid lines connecting to make an odd, disjointed kind of circle, cut through the center so that it almost looked like an eye.

  Saxony stopped, heart pounding fiercely.

  It was a symbol she knew all too well.

  “They were Crafters?” she asked, turning back to Wesley.

  She knew the answer before he said it.

  “No.” He shook his head. “But they had some pretty strong charms. Ashwood arms his people well.”

  I will not lose a third grandchild. I will protect you at any cost.

  Is this what Amja had meant by those words? Had the dream-world been a distraction?

  No. Saxony wouldn’t believe it. Amja was not capable of such things.

  Saxony pushed down the pang in her heart, the familiarity of that symbol, and stepped over the fallen bodies.

  She hurried toward Karam.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Tavia asked.

  Saxony crouched beside Karam and nodded, though she wasn’t sure if she even had the strength to heal, with her head still dancing circles from being thrown clear across the forest.

  “She’ll be fine,” Saxony said. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

  “It is actually quite bad,” Karam said, arching her head to look at Tavia. “I think it is deep.”

  Tavia grimaced, which Saxony suspected was Karam’s intention. She’d probably been injured saving Tavia, jumping in front of a knife or a charm like the hero she was. It was the only way someone as fast as Karam could be bleeding while Tavia remained unscathed. And Karam wouldn’t let her forget it. Still, the guilt faded from Tavia’s face quick enough and she simply shrugged.

  “I guess this makes us even,” Tavia said.

  Karam’s mouth was agape. “When did you get stabbed for me?”

  Saxony inched Karam’s shirt up
ward. Blood crawled under her ribs and down to her waist. The wound was large, but not deep. It wasn’t the worst Saxony had seen and certainly not the worst Karam had ever gotten.

  “I basically saved you at the train station,” Tavia said. “Ergo, we’re even.”

  Wesley sighed. “For the last time, I didn’t need saving. I never need saving.”

  They ignored him.

  “I got shot waiting for you to rob a safe,” Karam said. “Ergo, you already owed me.”

  Tavia paused. And then, “You know, we really shouldn’t keep score. What’s a bullet or two between friends?”

  “We are not—”

  Saxony pressed a hand against Karam’s wound.

  “Hei reb,” Karam said. “Just heal it already.”

  Her brown skin was dulled, lips blanched, and when Saxony touched her Karam shivered like the cold was too much to bear.

  “I’m concentrating,” Saxony said. “Healing requires focus and my head is still pounding. I don’t want to sever you in half.”

  Karam blinked. “Is that a risk?” She looked over to Arjun. “You did not say that was a risk.”

  Saxony wiped some of Karam’s blood away with her sleeve to get a better look at the wound.

  “You are a sadist,” Karam said.

  Saxony tried not to smile. She liked Karam most when she was angry. Though since Karam was always angry, that meant Saxony pretty much liked her all of the time.

  It made kissing her real hard to resist.

  “Here goes,” Saxony said.

  She held her hands out above Karam’s wound and took in a breath.

  When Zekia healed, she closed her eyes, feeling the energy ripple through her as she stitched skin to skin and made blood fade like water marks, but Saxony liked to see her magic in action, watching as her power erased all that had come before.

  Gold light sprinkled from Saxony’s palms and sank into the hole that sliced through Karam’s side. Her skin began to bubble.

  Saxony watched, tight-lipped, as she writhed in agony. It almost seemed like she was creating new wounds, instead of fixing the old.

  Gold veins spread like roots across Karam’s stomach, up to her chest, leeching onto her neck as Saxony’s power crawled into every inch of her, pumping through her body beside her blood.