Into The Crooked Place

by Alexandra Christo

  He groaned and when she rolled off him, reality hit Wesley like a brick to the head. Some of the buskers called to him, murmuring loud enough to give him a migraine.

  When Wesley opened his eyes to try to steady himself, he saw that the phantoms hovered around him and Tavia in a makeshift blockade that the few buskers in the carriage were too scared to break.

  Only Falk approached.

  Such a loyal army.

  Wesley pressed the heel of his hand to his brow, trying to stamp out the pain, but blood trickled from his nose and down to his lips.

  Jumping through reality took its toll.

  Tavia rolled her neck to get the stiffness out and Wesley watched her movements, a little hypnotized. He felt undeniably groggy and the realms hadn’t quite righted, but while most things blurred and pounded in his vision, Tavia was clear and sharp-edged. She stayed in focus while the rest of the realms spun.

  He thought back to her hand against his chest, her fingers clutched around his, her breath mingling with his own.

  “Are you okay, sir?” Falk asked.

  “No,” Tavia answered for him. “Someone pinch me so I know we’re not still dreaming.”

  Wesley leaned forward with a wry smile. “I could kiss you instead.”

  Tavia froze.

  Wesley was close enough to smell the seawater on her skin and see the flicker of light bounce from the knife at her hip. He was joking, kind of, but it felt like his chest might explode.

  There were inches between them.

  And then Tavia’s blade was on his neck.

  “You haven’t nearly died enough times already?” she asked.

  “I was only being thorough.”

  Wesley let an easy smile slide onto his face, though his palms were somewhat sweaty. There wasn’t much else to do with the likes of their army and half the dead in the sea watching. This back-and-forth between them was getting more dangerous the longer they were together. It brought out a side to Wesley he thought he’d buried.

  Tavia had seen the worst thing he had ever done—she’d seen how he became underboss—and didn’t look at him like he was a monster.

  But that is what you are. My beautiful monster.

  Wesley cleared his throat and Tavia swiped her lips furiously with the back of her hand, as though he really had kissed her.

  “You should kiss every person on this train, then,” she said. “To be thorough.”

  “Even Karam?” Wesley painted a cartoon look of horror on his face.

  Tavia lowered her knife. “Is she not pretty enough for you?”

  When she smirked, Wesley almost sighed in relief. “It’s not that,” Wesley said, because he supposed Karam was pretty in the same rough and tarnished way that an uncut diamond might be.

  Wesley just never much liked diamonds.

  “Then what?”

  Wesley wanted to tell Tavia that it was because he only really felt like kissing her at that specific moment in time and, if he was honest, most moments in time. But he quickly decided against honesty.

  It had never suited him in the past.

  “I don’t think I’m her type,” Wesley said.

  “I don’t think you’re anybody’s type.”

  “Say that to the tingling feeling in your stomach.”

  Tavia pocketed her knife. “It’s called nausea.”

  “I prefer to think of it as lovesickness.”

  Falk held out a hand to pull Wesley up, leaving Tavia to stumble to her feet unaided.

  She craned her neck to search the carriage. “Where are Saxony and the others?”

  The tear in the realm remained open but dormant and there was no sign of Karam or Saxony. And no sign of Arjun, either.

  Not that Wesley cared.

  “Maybe our team won,” he said.

  Tavia shot him a look. “They were on our team.”

  Wesley shrugged. “Winning’s winning.”

  As though the doorway was listening and displeased by the thought of Wesley winning anything, it began to shudder. He took a step back alongside Tavia, and just as they moved from the path of the tear, Karam was flung from the darkness and into the carriage.

  Then Saxony.

  And then Arjun, at which point Wesley sighed.

  They landed in a pile on top of each other, groaning and trying to roll out of the trajectory of the doorway before anything else was spat out.

  They looked about as shitty as Wesley felt.

  Tavia stared down at the haphazard bundle with a grin. “You guys took your time.”

  Karam wiped the blood from her nose with her shirtsleeve and Arjun rubbed his eyes.

  “Are you hurt?” Tavia asked.

  Karam looked offended at the thought.

  “Name and shame then,” Tavia said. “I want to know everyone’s regrets so I feel less like crap.”

  Karam cleared her throat. “My father,” she said, in a tone that told them she wouldn’t elaborate any more than that.

  From the floor, Arjun pushed a busker off his leg. “My pride.”

  “Your regret was being a jackass?” Tavia asked.

  “And he seemed so down-to-earth when he said he was better than me,” Wesley said.

  Arjun stood, his balance unsteady. “Be happy my sin wasn’t death. You wouldn’t be unscathed.”

  Wesley gave him a half smile. “I love it when you get all manly with me.”

  “And you?” Tavia asked Saxony. “What was your regret?”

  Saxony took in a breath big enough to make it seem like she was preparing herself for a great battle. Wesley didn’t know what to make of that, since he thought they’d just won one.

  “My regret was my family,” Saxony said. “I walked through the door and had to watch—”

  She paused and closed her eyes, holding in something too terrible for words. Karam stood close to her.

  “I had to relive the day my mother and brother died,” Saxony said. “My regret was not being able to stop it from happening.”

  Wesley begged to differ.

  Saxony was talking far too quickly and the way she shuffled her feet gave him pause.

  Tavia pulled her into a tight hug, murmuring words Wesley couldn’t quite make out, but though Saxony returned the gesture, her eyes shifted. To the ground, to the phantoms, and then to Wesley, before she quickly looked away.

  He brought his hands to his cuff links to stop them from going to his gun.

  Wesley did not like whatever unspoken thing sat in the air and he especially did not like that nobody else seemed to notice.

  “So what’s next?” Tavia asked, pulling away from Saxony. “We’ve completed all of our regrets.”

  Karam settled against the train wall. “Maybe they kill us?”

  Tavia groaned. “As if there aren’t already enough ghosts on this train.”

  “Phantoms,” Saxony corrected, and even Karam rolled her eyes at that.

  One of the creatures stepped from the blockade and Wesley reached for his gun on instinct, only to chide himself.

  “The ultimate sacrifice will need to be made if you want to finish this crusade. Death waits for you together; embrace it or risk losing the battle forever.”

  It was more person-like than the other phantoms, with a small cap shielding its smudged forehead and the barely there face of a child. When the boy’s mouth pulled open and a voice that couldn’t have been his croaked out their orders, Wesley grimaced.

  “The ultimate sacrifice,” Tavia repeated. “So one of us has to die?”

  “Not a problem,” Wesley said.

  He pulled out his gun and most of the buskers took a quick step back.

  Arjun scowled. “Trust you to be so ready to kill.”

  “I’m happy to sit this one out,” Tavia said.

  Wesley cocked his gun. “Suits me.” He checked the sight. “I already have a sacrifice in mind.”

  His eyes didn’t bother to search their army.

  Wesley knew which of them needed to die.
He rolled his shoulder, then his neck, just to make sure his vision had settled. If he missed, then that would be really embarrassing.

  He pointed his gun at Saxony and she sneered.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Sure you will.”

  Wesley smirked. He didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her, but Tavia did and that meant something.

  He moved the gun to Arjun.

  “Close your eyes,” Wesley said.

  Karam surged forward. “Wait—”

  Wesley pulled the trigger.

  Behind Arjun, Falk slumped to the floor.

  The bullet took root in his brow.

  A bull’s-eye shot.

  Arjun jumped out of the gun’s trajectory and swore profusely in Wrenyi. He pressed a hand to his ear to check if the bullet had nicked him. It hadn’t, though Wesley was tempted.

  “What was that?” Tavia yelled.

  “Pelg hijada,” Arjun spat.

  Wesley didn’t think that sounded like a compliment on his shooting skills, which was a pity because that was a shot to be applauded.

  “You’re completely insane!” Saxony said. “You just murdered an innocent man.”

  Wesley put the gun back into his belt. “No such creature. That bastard’s been sending delg bats to the Kingpin since Creije.”

  Wesley may not have trusted Falk, but he knew better than to be blinded by his dislike for someone. He knew how to be impartial. Wesley dealt in facts and the fact was that Falk hadn’t been keeping tabs for him; he’d been keeping tabs on him.

  “You think he was spying for Ashwood?” Saxony asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t be sure.”

  “It’s my business to be sure. If I wasn’t, half the people on this train would be dead.”

  Even Karam looked doubtful. “If you have no proof—”

  “It started in Creije,” Wesley said, impatient. “First at the train station, where the consort’s men just happened to know we would be commandeering the old train tracks. He sent a delg bat.”

  “I thought that was on your orders,” Karam said.

  “It wasn’t. And then we’re attacked in Granka? Not to mention I saw him with a bat before we set off on these waters.”

  Arjun blanched. “He sent a messenger after you met with my Kin?”

  Wesley nodded. He knew the difference between coincidence and sloppy spying, and though Falk may have been decent company in small doses, he was not a decent man in any dose. He was not to be trusted. Sending those bats to Ashwood had not only meant doom for Arjun’s Kin, but it risked everything Wesley was working to achieve. It had put Tavia and their entire army in danger.

  “You think he was responsible for the attack in Granka,” Saxony said. She stared down at Falk’s body with a look of horror.

  Arjun’s jaw locked and when he took in Falk’s lifeless corpse, it was with the kind of hatred Wesley thought only he was capable of.

  “Why keep him around?” Tavia asked.

  “I needed him to help complete the time charges,” Wesley said. “The bastard was slow-walking the whole thing, but once Arjun came on board, Falk had no choice but to finish. I killed him as soon as it was possible.”

  Tavia was still.

  She had always been wary of Falk, even going so far as to nickname him Wesley’s weasel, which Wesley took as much as an insult to him. Still, he seemed to be making a habit of killing people in front of her, even dream people, and Wesley hated that.

  Tavia took in a deep breath and then uttered three words Wesley hadn’t heard from her since they were children.

  “I trust you,” she said.

  Karam nodded. “I will too.”

  Arjun practically snarled at Falk’s lifeless body. “Good riddance.”

  But it was Saxony who surprised Wesley most. “You did what was necessary,” she said. “It’s all any of us can do.”

  Wesley cleared his throat.

  Nobody had trusted him in a long time. Even as a child, his family quietened whenever he walked into a room and never let him out of their sight. Like he needed to be watched and judged. Like they knew he was destined for awful things.

  Wesley wasn’t sure that trusting him was a good thing to do, nobody else had ever thought so, but these people did and that stirred something in him.

  “Are we done?” Wesley asked the phantoms. “We passed, right?”

  The ghostly figures smiled and in perfect unison, they said, “Keep steady on your course, underboss. Your king is waiting.”

  THE STARS LOOKED UPON Deniel and quivered.

  One by one they blinked from the sky, hiding behind clouds and rain and dark.

  Deniel set himself onto the pavement and watched the hungry take Creije. The magic, the truth, roaming the city and stealing what needed to be stolen.

  Around him footsteps thundered.

  The amityguards were like hunters, circling him, and when they saw Deniel was covered in blood and his eyes were black, a succession of contradictory shouts roared through the night.

  Step back.

  Don’t move.

  Hands up.

  Throw us your weapons and your magic.

  They did not see that the dark was starting to fade. That there was color and light, that there was Deniel, buried underneath it all, trying to claw his way back.

  Deniel Emilsson. Son to Margaret and Emil. He had a husband, too, he thought. And possibly a son, or a daughter. He couldn’t remember exactly, but he was sure they were there, in the shiny places of his mind that now cowered and hid, for fear they would be erased.

  Deniel fingered his knife, used it to pick the dirt and blood from under his nails.

  “We’re warning you,” an amityguard said. “Surrender or die.”

  Deniel was already dead and so he did not surrender.

  Not because he didn’t want to, but because he really couldn’t. The voices were listening and watching, if voices could do such things, and if Deniel were to breathe without their command, he would feel the pain of it. Their screams would bleed from his ears and he would forget wrong from right again.

  Better he be still.

  “Listen,” Deniel said. “Can you hear them? Are they still inside?”

  Silence.

  The amityguards kept their weapons primed, stances firm and angled, and the mirrored visors that obscured half their faces kept Deniel from seeing any sign of deliberation or mercy in their eyes.

  There was nothing but quiet and a gun’s length between him and the law of Creije.

  Deniel laughed.

  He ran a thumb across the corner of his lip, picking at a scab of blood.

  That was all there was to do.

  “Run,” Deniel told them. Not a threat, but a plea. “Run from the mad king and his mad truths.”

  Deniel felt the butt of a gun jam into his stomach and he keeled forward.

  A second hit pounded into his back, knocking him to his knees. He went down hard, palms smacking the cobblestone. Deniel gasped in air like it was Cloverye.

  It hurt. Not more than the whispers, nothing else ever had, but it hurt worse than most things.

  The cold metal of a gun pressed to Deniel’s temple and he braced himself.

  “Wait.”

  An amityguard placed her hand over the gun of her comrade.

  “The Doyen will want to see him. She’ll want to study whatever this is.”

  The one with the gun to Deniel’s head sighed. “Let her study another,” he said. “They’re all over the city. I doubt she’ll miss just one.”

  Deniel blinked up at them. The amityguard’s gun was crooked into his armpit, a visor shielding his face so that he could barely be told apart from his comrades. But the scruff on his chin and pitched inclination of his vowels told Deniel that they were not far apart in age.

  “Do you want to die?” the amityguard asked him.

  Deniel looked up to the hiding stars, then back down to his hands, thinking that it didn’t matt
er what he wanted. The blood was already drying on his knuckles. The stains were there. He knew there was no chance they’d come out.

  Deniel hadn’t known himself for a while now, but he did know this: the ashen king was coming, and he would bring death and magic and new worlds.

  “You are traitors,” Deniel said.

  He was too.

  They all were, and traitors needed to die.

  Everyone needed to die and it was best they did so before the new world came.

  The amityguard pressed his gun back to Deniel’s temple.

  Deniel closed his eyes and besides that, he didn’t move, or think to run.

  He wasn’t afraid anymore.

  He welcomed the darkness and the final peace it would bring.

  CLOVERYE WAS WHAT ALL the swells in Creije drank and Wesley had enough bottles to kill a small army. Tavia wondered whether they might actually be able to use it against the Kingpin.

  She wasn’t sure why he prioritized packing so many bottles, and who he’d tasked with bringing them aboard. Looking around at the collection Wesley had amassed, she half-suspected he planned on opening a new Crook aboard the train.

  “Is this an underboss thing?” Tavia asked, with raised eyebrows. “Collect a bottle of Cloverye for every dead body?”

  Wesley’s laugh was monotone. “I see Saxony has been teaching you how to make jokes.”

  Tavia withheld a snort.

  He and Saxony were caught halfway between mortal enemies and petty rivalry, and as entertaining as it was to watch, it wasn’t going to help them win this war.

  Wesley made to hand Tavia a glass and she shook her head, snatching the bottle instead. “If we’re about to die, you can be a little less tight with the drinks.”

  She swallowed a bitter mouthful and then quickly remembered why she rarely drank. Specifically, why she rarely drank Cloverye. The rich and the ruthless may have loved the prestige, but that shit was nasty.

  Tavia made a face and basically threw the bottle back into Wesley’s hands.

  “Many Gods,” she said with a wince, at the same time as Wesley said, “Always so refined.”

  He poured himself a glass, smiling in a way that made it hard for Tavia to glare.

  She took a seat opposite him and stared out at the ocean beyond the glass, endless and so impossibly blue.