Into The Crooked Place

by Alexandra Christo

  Saxony turned on Wesley like a rabid creature, like if she wasn’t so broken she might just rip him to pieces with her bare hands.

  “I helped you,” she seethed. “And all this time you traded her for a promotion?”

  Wesley said nothing.

  “It was the best of many futures,” Zekia said.

  Wesley was glad his sunglasses hid his expression. “You can’t predict the future,” he said, remembering her words. “There are too many possibilities.”

  “And I can see them all,” Zekia said. “Hundreds of ways our fates were destined to entwine. One where the Kingpin found me and one where you turned me in.” She paused and something like sadness flared across her eyes. “I didn’t want to wait and see if that last one was true.”

  “You’ve lost your mind,” Saxony said. “You’ve let him turn you into a monster.”

  “Such nonsense. I’ve made her into something glorious.”

  Ashwood snapped his fingers and, like a well-trained pet, Zekia blew into the palm of her hand. Images dropped from her skin like water.

  Visions came to life of another Saxony, dressed in the same black uniform as Asees, with the Kingpin’s insignia noosed around her thumb. Flame crawled along her arms, licking her neck and setting the ends of her hair alight in pure gold fire.

  The conjured Saxony took a step toward Ashwood, who leaned forward to get a closer look at her. She let the flames die out as she approached, before falling to her knees and bowing before her king.

  Intuitcrafter.

  This was what Zekia did. Messed with people’s heads and got inside their minds. It was how she’d gotten inside Wesley’s all those years ago. How she stayed there, this whole time.

  The vision of Saxony dispersed and the real Crafter spat on the floor by Ashwood’s feet. “That’ll never happen,” she said.

  “Your sister has foretold many futures. Do you want to know in how many of them you join me?”

  “I want to know in how many of them I kill you.”

  Ashwood laughed. “And you, Wesley? My boy did not kill my consort and face his past just to present me a Crafter with a vendetta.”

  Wesley glanced at the clock that chimed above the Kingpin’s throne, with a face of bone and hands of sinew. The shadow moon was coming, but he needed to bide time for Karam and the others to place the charges. For their army to get ready to strike.

  Wesley pushes his sunglasses up his nose.

  “So I was right,” Wesley said. “The sacrifice we needed wasn’t killing Falk. It was surrendering our own lives.”

  “It was theatrical, I’ll admit,” Ashwood said. “Though I am curious as to why your favorite spy was eliminated.”

  “He worked for you,” Tavia said.

  And when Ashwood only smiled, Wesley’s stomach sank.

  “If he did, I’d applaud the move, little busker. After all, traitors must be extinguished once they have outgrown their use. I taught Wesley that when he was just a boy.”

  “Falk sent delg bats to you,” Tavia said. “He was the reason you attacked us in Granka.”

  Ashwood chuckled. “I attacked and you managed to survive? Why would I interrupt my own game like that?”

  Silence followed and the air grew heavy around them all. Something awful took over the moment, more awful than Zekia being on the Kingpin’s side, or him being about to kill them all.

  “It was me.”

  Saxony kept her eyes on the floor, staring straight through the earth.

  “I made Falk send the bats,” she said. “I told him they were for Wesley.”

  Tavia shook her head. “You wouldn’t do that. You’re on our side.”

  “I’m on Zekia’s side,” Saxony said.

  “You’re my friend!” Tavia screamed. “We said we were in this together. For your sister and my muma.”

  “You weren’t at the train station back in Creije! I thought you’d gotten killed,” Saxony said. Her eyes welled with furious tears. “And I already knew how to find the Kingpin, so I didn’t need Wesley anymore. I sent a bat to the guards, tipping off our location, thinking I could slip out with Karam after it was over. I didn’t know how many they’d send.”

  “You knew they would try to kill us,” Wesley said, his voice as quiet as hers. He felt like if he raised it, then he might just explode. “You knew they would try to kill me. You hoped for it.”

  There was magic in him now and it swelled with every breath he took in anger.

  “And Granka?” Tavia asked. “I was there then.”

  “That wasn’t me,” Saxony said, suddenly desperate, pushing herself to her feet and grabbing Tavia’s hands in hers. “I swear it to the Many Gods. I was knocked out by my amja’s magic. She took me to this place inside both of our minds to convince me to betray you. She was so afraid of losing me. But I told her no. I didn’t realize what she had planned.”

  Tavia snatched her hands from Saxony’s. “It was your Kin who attacked us?”

  “Our allies,” Saxony said. “I recognized the markings on them and I knew that my amja’s concern for me had made her blind. After Karam got hurt, I didn’t want my Kin near either of you. For the first time, I realized I couldn’t trust them to do the right thing. Their fear made them reckless. So I had Falk send a bat telling them to back off. That I wouldn’t let them know where we were heading and I would bring Zekia back myself.”

  “Arjun’s Kin was attacked after that,” Wesley said.

  “I would never play any part in that!” Saxony said, but her voice held more guilt than anger.

  Wesley knew liars well and Saxony was up there with the best of them.

  “You didn’t say anything,” Tavia said. “Not even when we turned our backs on Falk.”

  Wesley shifted.

  He had killed someone who was at least semi-innocent and he’d roped Tavia in on it. She’d put her faith in him, in his judgment, swallowing any morals she had, for nothing.

  All for somebody else’s games.

  “I’m sorry for Falk,” Saxony said. “But you have to believe that I wasn’t responsible for Arjun’s Kin. The bat was—”

  “Ah yes.” Ashwood leaned back in his chair. “Now I remember.”

  Zekia hummed. “Such a pretty creature. It sang to us quite sweetly.”

  “You intercepted it,” Wesley said. “And then killed the Kin for helping us.”

  Zekia shook her head slowly, hypnotically, from side to side. “Not all of them.”

  She inclined her head to Asees. A weapon ready to attack them from behind.

  “We saved some of the most delicious.”

  “I thought I had you on that last test,” Ashwood said, almost excited. “After all, my Wesley would never sacrifice himself alongside crooks. Worthless lowlifes that they are. Yet here you stand.”

  Wesley swallowed.

  Boredom. Curiosity. Just another game. All those lives ruined, the chaos they’d left in their wake for nothing.

  Wesley never had the Kingpin on the ropes, even for a minute.

  He was truly a puppet. A lapdog.

  “I knew you would betray me one day,” Ashwood said. “But a dog has to bite before you can put it down, Wesley.”

  Ashwood didn’t sound annoyed, but impressed that Wesley was able to rise up against him. As though it showed initiative, rather than disloyalty.

  His clever little prodigy.

  “Is that what you’re going to do?” Wesley asked. “Put me down?”

  “I’m going to give you the realms, my boy. Betraying me was the only way for you to prove you were powerful enough to be my successor. You have shown me that you have what it takes to be just like me.”

  There was enough pride in his voice for Wesley to hate himself.

  “Creije is the first of many cities we will conquer together,” Ashwood said. “It has already begun, and one by one we will take Uskhanya from Schulze and pave the way for our new realm.”

  “By stealing people’s minds, just like you
stole my sister’s,” Saxony said.

  “It isn’t stealing,” Zekia said, “if it’s a gift.”

  “You’re not an object to be passed around!”

  Zekia tutted. “I meant the magic. A gift, from me to my Kingpin.”

  Saxony blanched and Wesley tried to reconcile the girl he knew with the one in front of him.

  Zekia had created the elixir.

  She’d used her specialty to make something powerful enough to take someone’s mind, when she had once apologized for accidentally stumbling into his.

  Just what had Wesley done, by leaving her behind?

  “It isn’t true,” Saxony said. “You’re lying!”

  “Then how is your mind still your own?” Zekia asked. “How did you think you fought against the magic of the Loj?”

  “Blood,” Wesley said.

  He was so stupid not to think of it.

  My clever, clever boy.

  “I felt it the moment you swallowed that elixir. A part of myself in you, sister. You even conquered the mark. Did you think it was because you were so strong and powerful?” Zekia asked, laughter circling from her lips. “It is because you are my blood and the elixir is my blood. That gives you a certain kind of immunity. Not what I planned, but you know better than anyone that a Crafter can’t be enshrined by her own magic.”

  “My magic is your magic, my blood is your blood,” Saxony said, looking at the floor with such awful sadness. “You were supposed to be our Liege, Zekia, and this is what you became instead.”

  “I was never supposed to be anything,” Zekia said. “My futures are not my own. They belonged to our brother.”

  “Is the elixir permanent?” Wesley asked.

  “The Loj cannot last forever,” Zekia said. “Like all things, magic is temporary.”

  The shadows squirmed around the Kingpin. “That is why any who refuse to bow and instead cling to the past will be culled.”

  “You mean killed,” Wesley said.

  “I mean cleansed,” Ashwood corrected. “Like the disease they are.”

  “Free will isn’t a disease.”

  “Then how is it I’ve found the cure? How is it that Creije is already to falling to its knees?”

  At the mention of his city, Wesley surged forward.

  He didn’t know how much madness Ashwood had brought down upon it in his absence, but just the idea, the thought that his home could be lost, stabbed at Wesley’s heart.

  He couldn’t wait any longer. He could smell the fire on Saxony and see how Tavia’s hands twitched by her sides as she tried not to go for the charm pouches clinched to her waist.

  And Wesley. Even he could feel the new magic rising up in him, churning his insides.

  He wasn’t righteous. He wasn’t a saint. But damn if he was going to let Ashwood destroy the minds of every single person in his realm. There was crooked and then there was just deranged.

  Wesley cast one more glance to the clock. The shadow moon would be upon them any minute.

  And then he paused.

  A memory from Granka whirled through Wesley.

  When midnight rings … Time will be carried in strange hands.

  He could hear it singing to him all over again.

  Not a hallucination, but his new Intuitcrafter magic, predicting this very moment. The orb had done the same for Tavia back in Creije.

  “I’m going to destroy you,” Wesley said.

  He didn’t reach for his gun. The Crafter magic was a well inside him, waiting to be opened. Wesley took another step toward the Kingpin.

  Ashwood sniffed the air and his laugh was like crows in the night.

  “Your magic is not borrowed,” he said.

  Wesley ripped off his glasses and looked directly into the darkness that hid Ashwood from him. And for the first time, the darkness could look back.

  “I’m a vessel for the Grankan Kin of Crafters,” Wesley said. “I carry their magic.”

  Ashwood leaned forward, regarding him with a serpent’s smile. “Do you.”

  “They imbued me with their power.”

  “Did they.”

  He didn’t look concerned.

  He looked so, so proud.

  Zekia shook her head and made another tutting sound. “Such lies,” she said. “Such beautiful, dangerous lies. I’ll tear them out for you, one by one.”

  Until there’s nothing left.

  The six magic wielders beside the Kingpin glowered and when Wesley turned he saw that Tavia and Saxony were already facing the doors, facing Asees and Gael.

  Wesley hoped they had enough magic between them to fight eight Crafters before the time charges went off, but Tavia didn’t look worried—she palmed one of her charm pouches and hardened her glare, ready to fight.

  “You can take your place now, Wesley,” Ashwood said. “By my side, where you have always belonged. Let me be a father to you.”

  Such empty words.

  Wesley had a father.

  Even though he was probably dead, even though he might never have loved Wesley, even though Wesley had abandoned him and the rest of his family. He could forget their faces and their voices and the memories of the scars they’d given him, but never that they existed.

  Never that they were his.

  “I’m not your son,” Wesley said. “And I’m not a traitor.”

  Because it was the Kingpin who had betrayed him with this madness and his greed. By destroying Ashwood, Wesley was protecting Uskhanya.

  Ashwood stood. “Oh, but you are,” he said. “And traitors must be punished.”

  He smiled, one last time, and then from his orb an army was birthed.

  WAR WAGED AT TAVIA’S footsteps.

  Wraith-like incarnations of their army sprouted from the Kingpin’s orb and took shape. They slaughtered one another by her feet, moving through the room like ghosts, howling with every blow.

  Crafters and buskers and the Kingpin’s people who looked to be a mix of both, stabbing and shooting and sending blasts of energy toward each other. There was blood and there was screaming and the skies wept down on them all. Rain like a torrent on the fighters and the bodies of those whose fight was over.

  Tavia stumbled back and Wesley’s hand locked into hers.

  She didn’t have time to question the feeling that rippled through her, or to savor it.

  This was their army on the shores of the castle, dying at the Kingpin’s hand, and Tavia didn’t know if it was a vision of what was to come, or a reality of what had happened. She didn’t know if their people were already dead, killed outside of these walls before they even knew the battle had begun.

  Saxony held out a hand to touch the image of Karam. It went through her cheek. Karam raised a sword and brought it down upon a guard. Then another. And another. Until a Crafter with eyes as red as the fire-gates shot a beam of lightning her way.

  It crushed against Karam’s spine and sent her catapulting through the air. Through the battlefield. Through the walls of the room and out of sight.

  “Karam!”

  Saxony ran to the stone wall and pressed her hand against it, as though it might open and reveal her on the other side.

  Wesley’s grip tightened around Tavia’s hand. He was shaking.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Wesley,” Zekia said. “And you shouldn’t.”

  “You’re not in my head now, kid. You have no idea what I’m thinking.”

  “Then let’s fix that.”

  Zekia launched herself into the air, nails like claws.

  Quickly, Wesley shoved Tavia backward and Zekia landed on him like a jungle cat, the force of it sending them both across the room.

  And then the Crafters attacked.

  They threw magic like skipping stones. A shard of ice cut through the air and skimmed Tavia’s cheek as she jumped out of the way.

  Saxony returned the blow with a gust of fire that set one of them alight in an instant.

  He barely had time to scream before he was ash.
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  “This will be fun,” Asees said, with a horrible, unfamiliar smile on her lips.

  Saxony conjured another flame in her hand, throwing it up and down. “I plan to enjoy it as well.”

  She heaved the flame at the same time that Tavia reached inside one of her charm pouches and threw the first marble she felt. There was no time to read it properly, so she had to go by gut and her gut was telling her to throw every single thing she had at these bastards.

  One of the Crafters pounded his fists into the floor and it cracked. Tavia straddled a broken line and heaved another charm their way. It exploded above their heads and a great mass of stone crashed down onto one of them.

  Two down.

  Saxony lifted her shield, letting it envelop Tavia as the remaining Crafters circled.

  They needed to send the signal to the others and let them know it was time to set those damn charges off.

  Tavia whirled around. The Kingpin was watching, unmoved from his shadow throne. A spectator in his own war.

  And Wesley. Many Gods. Zekia threw him across the room with little more than a flick of her wrist. But he was up in seconds, firing off bullets from one hand and orbs of energy from the other.

  Tavia felt the ground shudder.

  The Crafters were throwing charms at them, over and over, pounding against the shield Saxony had created.

  Saxony stumbled back a few steps and screamed. From her fingernails flame flew out like darts. The Crafters dove to avoid it.

  “Go!” Saxony yelled. “Help Wesley!”

  Tavia ignored her and pulled out another weapon charm, fingering it. Then she arched her shoulder and threw. The air above them gurgled and groaned. Lightning spat down on the Crafters, striking one in the heart.

  He fell to the floor, lifeless.

  But Tavia didn’t have time to feel guilt or relief. There were still four remaining.

  Asees grinned at her fallen comrade and then threw her hands toward the lightning, pushing water and wind until it quivered and dissolved.

  She was a Spiritcrafter, just like Arjun.

  Tavia cursed.

  Her tricks were just that. Tricks. Against Crafters she felt like an amateur.