And Schulze wasn’t stupid.
“For the love of the Many Gods and my patience,” Wesley said, looking between Tavia and Saxony. “Would you two sort out your issues?”
“I don’t have issues,” Tavia said. “I’m just—”
“Pissed that Saxony tried to double-cross us back in Creije,” Wesley finished. “I wasn’t exactly happy about it at the time either, but she was trying to kill me, not you. And it wasn’t her fault that Ashwood intercepted her delg bats or that Zekia took me captive.”
Tavia started to argue, because that was what she was best at, but it was Saxony who spoke first.
“I never wanted any of that to happen,” she said. “But I can’t spend the rest of my life saying sorry.”
“You’re just as bad,” Wesley told her. “You need to stop second-guessing every choice Tavia makes. You’re a Liege now, but you’re not a wise old warrior. You both have the same experience, especially when it comes to getting on my damn nerves. So kiss and make up already.”
Wesley tugged on his lapels, trying to contain his frustration. He’d survived being tortured for weeks and he still forced his chin up. If he could pretend everything was okay, then the least everyone else could do was follow his example.
“I have been trying to fix them for a while now,” Karam said. “But they both enjoy the sound of their own voices. I suppose they learned that from you.”
Wesley touched his chest, affronted.
Tavia cast a glance at Saxony. “I’m not going to say Wesley is right, because I’d never say that. But I know that not everything that goes wrong is your fault,” she said. “And I haven’t exactly been the best company.”
“You’re a busker,” Saxony said, with a playful smile. “You can’t help but be annoying.”
Tavia narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t seem to be offended. Barbs and insults were a language she understood, the same as Wesley. Growing up on the streets of Creije, being vulnerable often got you killed. Being a bastard often saved your life. And so it was easier to joke than it was to bare your soul to someone.
It was easier to be hated than loved.
Wesley knew that better than anyone.
“Great,” he said. “Now let’s present a united front and try to convince Schulze that she can trust us.”
Saxony folded her arms across her chest and reclined back in her chair, to signal how much of a pain in the ass she was about to be. “She should be convincing us to trust her, after all her government has done to fail Crafters.”
“She’s a politician,” Tavia said. “They’re basically crooks in their own right.”
“So we’ll have something in common, then,” Wesley said. “That should help us join together to stop anyone else from being killed. We are all agreed that dying would be bad, right?”
It was supposed to be a joke, but the mood in the room turned even more somber and Karam stole a glance at Tavia that Wesley did not like. Especially since Tavia then looked pointedly away, in a direction that had no chance of meeting Karam’s stare.
Wesley only liked secrets when he was the one uncovering them. And he especially hated secrets when it came to Tavia.
“Yeah,” Tavia said. “Dying would suck.”
She smiled at Wesley, in the lying way he’d taught her to when they were kids and she needed to get one over on the old underboss.
“Thankfully we’re all pretty good at cheating death,” she said.
It was true, since every person in the room had survived when the odds were against them at least a handful of times. Karam and Arjun just a few days before. They might not have been great at a lot of things, but there was something to be said for a group of outcasts who refused to let life slip through their fingers.
There was a knock then and by the time Wesley turned, the double doors had been pushed open and a group of at least a dozen amityguards filled the room. They surrounded the small circle that Wesley and the others had made, their dark green uniforms pressed and cleared of even the smallest specks of dirt.
The faces of the men were freshly shaven, the women’s hair pulled back into tight ponytails, and each of their belts with a single gun to the left and a host of magic in perfectly organized pouches across the rest of the loops. The Uskhanyan insignia was on their breast pockets and when Fenna Schulze entered the room, they pressed their palms flat against it—against their hearts—and dipped their heads in a show of fealty.
“Wesley Thornton Walcott,” Schulze said. “Former underboss of Creije.”
“Fenna Schulze,” he said back. “Former Doyen of the realm.”
Schulze didn’t afford him a smile, but she did reach out her hand for Wesley to shake and he took it with slow and careful consideration. He was more than aware of the eyes of the amityguards, watching his every move for even a twitch of his fingers.
“I’m still the Doyen,” Schulze said.
“For now. But we all know Ashwood has other plans.”
Schulze sighed and took one of the two empty seats at the table. Wesley took the other, directly across from her.
Fenna Schulze had led Uskhanya to greatness since her election, working to secure better trade and clean up the streets of the realm from the darkest magics. She’d given rehabilitation to addicts and created banks where people could hand in illegal charms without fear of prosecution. She’d done a lot to help people feel safe from the underrealm again.
And she looked all the worse for it.
Not surprisingly, Schulze looked haggard and far more anxious than she did on the posters and graffiti drawn across the capital with slogans like Schulze for a better realm, scrawled by her angled jaw. Now, her short red hair was pushed haphazardly away from her face and her serpent-green eyes were lined with sleepless circles.
This woman was the leader of the realm, the elected Doyen, and she looked very much like she needed a drink.
Thankfully, Wesley already had a bottle of Cloverye in the center of the table.
“I assume it isn’t poisoned,” Schulze said, gesturing to the bottle.
“It’s not,” Wesley said.
He leaned over to grab the bottle and pushed it beside Schulze’s empty glass.
“Of course,” Schulze said, pouring out a drink for herself. “Poison is too clean and you do like to make a mess of things.”
Still, she looked at the bottle and then at Wesley expectantly, and it was only when he poured his own drink and took a sip that Schulze finally let her lips touch the glass.
“I appreciate you agreeing to meet us,” Wesley said. “It’s not every day that an underboss gets to see a Doyen in the flesh.”
“Your bat was too interesting to turn down. Though do be warned that I have taken precautions for my safety and if I don’t check in with my people every ten minutes, then they have permission to burn this estate to the ground,” Schulze said. “You’re surrounded with quick-fire charms.”
Wesley hadn’t expected any less.
“Then I guess I should talk fast,” he said. “Starting with the fact that Ashwood is on a mission to rule Uskhanya in your place.”
Schulze took another, much larger, sip of her drink. “And he’s already taken my capital,” she said. “And Tisvgen, where our dead can now no longer rest in peace. Now he is in my government city and I have had to be evacuated from my home. There’s no way back into Yejlath and a bulk of my forces are trapped inside, trying to defend it from those monsters while I’m unable to help.”
“That’s why we’re proposing an alliance,” Wesley said. “So we can kill Ashwood together.”
“Kill him,” Schulze repeated. She slammed her glass down on the table, hard enough that Wesley was surprised when it didn’t shatter. “Is that a joke?”
“Was it funny?”
Schulze eyed Wesley with as much suspicion as anyone had done. He was used to it. He’d built a reputation making sure that was the first thing people did: worried about what he was capable of and whether or not they
could trust him with their lives. Fenna Schulze couldn’t be blamed. Her entire career was built on the idea that Wesley and anyone like him was a danger to the realm.
She was the most prominent politician in a place where Wesley was one of the most prominent bad guys.
“My people are dying,” Schulze said. “And you want me to join with Crafters and crooks. Can you understand why that would not be my first decision?”
Wesley could. Just like he thought Schulze should understand that joining with the woman who wanted to tear down his empire was not his preferred course of action. Unfortunately, none of them had the luxury of options anymore.
War stole a lot from people, but more than anything it stole their choices and their freedom to dictate their own fate.
“You don’t need to be scared of us,” Tavia said. “Only of what could happen if we don’t learn to work together.”
Schulze looked close to laughing. “Ah yes,” she said. “Please, busker, tell me how the black magic you peddle to feed people’s addictions isn’t dangerous.”
“Now hang on a minute,” Saxony said.
“And you, Crafter.” Schulze turned to her with a disbelieving sigh. “When so many of your people willingly slaughter mine by Dante Ashwood’s side. Will you also preach about how trustworthy you are?”
This was not going well, but Wesley knew these were things that needed to be said if the air between them was ever going to be clear.
“Or you?” Schulze asked Karam. “Protector of the most dangerous man in Creije and fighter in the deadly underrealm rings. A killer for sport, aren’t you?”
Karam’s eyes did not flinch. “I am a descendant of the Rekhi d’Rihsni,” she said. “My family were warriors and protectors of justice.”
“They were protectors of magic,” Schulze said.
“Magic is what fuels this world,” Karam said. “You may hate dark magic, but light magic keeps your trains running and your waters clear and your amityguards armed to protect people.”
“It also helps keep your reelection campaign relevant,” Tavia said.
Schulze leaned back in her chair, so similarly to the way Tavia and Saxony were slouched that Wesley briefly remembered none of them were born politicians or underbosses with the weight of realms of their shoulders. They were all just people, trying to do what they thought was best. And maybe that was what Wesley needed to do in order to win Schulze’s trust: remind her of what was best for the realm.
“Dante Ashwood took my city,” Wesley said. “And now he’s going to take your realm. I made a deal with your Vice Doyen to stop him and I’d like to follow through on that.”
“Armin Krause was a great man,” Schulze said. “He was smart and he was curious that your friend survived after being injected with the magic sickness. That curiosity got him killed.”
“Magic sickness is a farce,” Tavia said, her back straightening. “It was caused by Ashwood’s experiments to create his Loj elixir. All of those people died for nothing.”
Her voice was as sharp as her knives and Wesley knew she was thinking about her mother, one of Ashwood’s earliest experiments. Wesley may have left his family in search of another life, but Tavia didn’t have a choice. Her mother was stolen from her. Her chance at a different kind of life was ripped away.
Ashwood thought of himself as a god, choosing who lived and died. Choosing whose life to ruin on a whim.
“We’ll make sure nobody else dies because of that monster and his sick desires to destroy all the good in the world,” Tavia said. “And we’re willing to sacrifice our own lives to do it. Are you even willing to sacrifice your pride?”
Wesley frowned. He knew Tavia was in pain, they all were, but he didn’t think predicting and planning their own deaths was going to help. There wasn’t a plan, or any kind of future, where Tavia didn’t make it out of this alive.
The thought wasn’t something he would even entertain.
“Armin trusted Creije’s notorious underboss and his best busker to get the job done,” Schulze said. “Was he right? Can you really end this war?”
Wesley nodded. “With your help. If we’re going to take Ashwood on, then we need everyone. Soldiers from your militia. Buskers from my streets. Crafters from across the realms. We’ve already ticked two of those boxes. The third rests on you.”
Schulze tipped back her Cloverye and finished the glass in a large gulp, like she still couldn’t quite believe she was in this moment, having this conversation. Or the fact that she knew there was no other way out of this war. Wesley saw the twitch on her face. She was desperate and he could work with desperate.
“We have around two hundred and fifty people,” Wesley said.
“Ashwood has double that,” Schulze said.
“But combined with your forces we outnumber him.”
“Except that his forces are mostly Crafters. Do you have a plan to deal with them and save Yejlath from their magic?”
“Actually, we do,” Wesley said. “I’ll lead a small team into Creije, at which point we activate magic to freeze Ashwood’s forces in the city, locking them in a moment of time. At that point, our army will head in. Half will go to Yejlath to defend the city from falling, led by you and Arjun over here.” Wesley nodded at the sword-wielding Crafter. “The other half will stay in Creije, led by me, and start taking out Ashwood’s incapacitated forces, regaining the capital.”
“A double-pronged attack,” Schulze said with interest. “We would come at Dante Ashwood from all sides?”
“Exactly,” Wesley said. “He won’t know what part to defend.”
“But he still has the elixir,” Schulze said. “Even if we defeat his forces once, he could make more.”
“It seems my people are coming up with all the plans.”
Wesley said it like it was real hard work and he took no pleasure in it at all. Only, he took great pleasure in his team being brilliant.
“We have a potential cure for the Loj,” he said. “It’ll protect our armies during battle and give the rest of the realms immunity in the future to stop this from ever happening again.”
Even a politician as well-practiced in deception as Schulze couldn’t hide her intrigue. Wesley and the others were offering her everything she needed to get her realm back and keep it.
The cure was still in the works, but Saxony was confident she could perfect it in a couple of days, especially with an entire legion of Crafters at her side helping, and Wesley was sure that when they finished, it would be a success.
It had his blood, after all, and what could be stronger than that?
“I’m impressed with all that you’ve done,” Schulze admitted. “It seems that Armin was right to align with you. And I don’t say that lightly.”
“Does that mean we have a deal?” Wesley asked.
He held out his hand for Schulze to take.
“I accept your alliance, underboss,” she said. She shook his hand and the sunlight filtered stronger through the window. “When do we advance?”
For the first time since the Doyen had walked into the room, Wesley let out a long breath of relief and clasped his hands on the table.
They had an army.
They had a plan.
Now all they needed was Dante Ashwood’s head on a platter.
30
TAVIA
“That is not how you play Clover Cards,” Tavia said, throwing her hand down on the table.
“It’s how I play,” Wesley said.
“Yeah, well, you’re an idiot. And a cheat.”
Wesley scooped up Tavia’s cards and shuffled them into the rest of the deck.
The estate was quiet with the night, but while the rest of their army slept and rested their bones, Tavia and Wesley sat in the gardens with the moon hovering like a streetlamp above them.
This was the last night they had before they headed into battle and she’d wanted them to spend it together, like old times.
The air was balmy but there were rare mo
ments when the wind picked up speed and ruffled the playing cards like feathers, like the night was breathing out a sigh of relief that it didn’t have to be alone. The darkness had Tavia and Wesley for company.
When Tavia won a hand, the wind clicked the nearby tree branches together in a steady clap.
When Wesley won, the trees themselves swayed so rhythmically that they created a low whistle, the leaves stirring in a rustled cheer.
Tavia didn’t think it was fair for plants to play favorites, especially when Wesley was so clearly a cheat, but apparently the trees liked it most when he played dirty.
“Want another game, or are you tired of losing already?” Wesley asked.
Tavia shot him a rude gesture. “It’s three all,” she said. “That’s not losing, that’s a draw.”
Wesley shrugged. “Whatever helps to stroke your ego.”
Tavia glared at him and snatched the deck back. “I’ll shuffle. That way you can’t palm the cards or fix your hand.”
“So little trust in me.”
Wesley put a hand to his chest, like he was entirely offended.
“Never trust an underboss,” Tavia said, dealing him his hand. “The only thing they’re good for is screwing people over.”
Wesley nodded, like she had a point. “That’s me,” he said.
The air shifted swiftly with his breath.
“Born a bastard. Destined to be a crook.”
Tavia paused mid-deal.
She hated the way his voice changed so abruptly when he said that. She’d only meant it to be a joke, but the resigned smile Wesley gave, casual and accepting, like that was his past and his future and he had no escape, made her want to scream.
It was she who had no choice.
Karam had seen it. Arjun had seen it.
Tavia was going to die by the end of this war, and if that happened, she didn’t want Wesley to spend the rest of his life feeling sorry for himself.
“Don’t talk shit,” Tavia said, laying the final card on the table.
Wesley quirked a brow. The moon pounded down, reflecting the unwavering black in his eyes that Tavia still couldn’t get used to.
“Don’t look so serious,” he said.
City of Spells Page 23
