The Shadow Game series

JAC

“Ah.” Levi grimaced as Jac opened the trapdoor to Zula’s basement. “There’s that smell.” The office of Her Forgotten Histories was cloaked in darkness, the only light source the faint flame above Levi’s fingers.

Jac watched the way Levi winced with each step as he descended. It was hard to tell exactly what was hurting him, other than everything. Jac still had a few sore spots from his boxing match at Dead at Dawn, but he had the Mardlin strength talent—he was made of stronger stuff than his friend.

But Jac didn’t have it in him to both hate Levi and feel sorry for him. So as he waited at the top of the stairs, pinching his nose, he settled on the former.

“What are you doing?” Levi asked.

“I’m not staying here.”

Levi and Jac had a lot in common. They both liked to gamble. They had mastered the art of hungover mornings, of sneaking into variety shows, of wandering the streets at moonlight hours searching for food or beds or both. Levi had helped Jac clear his debt at his One-Way House. Jac had sworn Levi that oath he’d always wanted. Their first jobs, first romances, first troubles—they’d seen each other through them side by side.

But there were differences that separated them, and to Jac, that gap had grown much wider in the past few days.

It went like this.

I only need four hundred more volts. Then I’ll be out, Jac had said. They were thirteen years old and sitting on a stoop in Olde Town they’d claimed because nobody else wanted it. Back then, his big dream was finding a way out of that One-Way House, one of the many “schools” that shipped in kids from across the Republic for “educational relocation.” Jac hadn’t learned to read, but he knew his way around a factory.

Reymond offered to make me his third today, Levi had confided in him. He’d said it like it was no big deal, like he’d been expecting it. Jac had laughed because he didn’t know what else to say. He was trying to pay out an indenture, and Levi was being offered everything.

I didn’t take it, Levi had said.

Not quite a year later, Jac got his first job as a dishboy at a tavern, and Levi was being recruited by the best casinos in the North Side.

And after that, when Jac’s job started paying him with Lullaby under the table, when it started to go bad—it didn’t compare. Jac had made the wrong choices. Levi hadn’t gotten a choice with Vianca.

Whatever Jac dreamed of, Levi dreamed bigger. Whatever Jac’s problems, Levi’s were worse. It wasn’t something that Levi had done intentionally, but it was plain all the same. Ever since the beginning, Levi was going to be a legend, and Jac—at best—was going to be a cautionary tale.

“Just give me a chance to explain,” Levi pleaded, shaking Jac out of his dark thoughts.

“I don’t want you to. I know how these wagers of yours work—you always think you’ll win. And you probably will. But I’m not a bargaining chip.” Though a pathetic part of him wondered if he always had been.

“Where will you go?”

Three Bells Church was always open. “I’ll be fine. Go decorate your room with your wanted posters.”

“You think I’m happy about this?” he asked, voice rising. If they weren’t careful, they would wake Zula sleeping in the apartment above them.

“Aren’t you?” Jac demanded. Levi had gotten everything he’d always wanted—a chance to rebuild the Irons, the repeat of his glorified Great Street War...and Enne, or so it seemed from earlier.

“Muck no,” Levi snapped. “But if you come down, if you give me ten minutes...” He let out an unnerving laugh. “You’ll probably hate me even more then. And I’ll deserve it. Today has spiraled, and every moment I think I’m getting ahead of it all, I just fall deeper into the red.”

Jac didn’t like the sound of that. “Hard to imagine hating you any more, right now.”

“Well, I’m asking for your help, and I know I don’t deserve it.”

“You don’t,” Jac said, but he was already climbing down the stairs. Because even if he did spend the night on a church pew, he’d just lay awake worrying about what Levi meant and wasting prayers—and then he’d be right back here in the morning.

Levi sat down on the edge of his bed, gingerly touching the places on his arms and chest where he’d been bruised. “This morning, I had a run-in with Harrison Augustine.”

“A bad sign if I ever knew one,” Jac responded darkly. He didn’t know much about Harrison, but the man shared his mother’s name, and thus her talent for omertas. That was enough of a reason to steer clear of him.

Levi recounted their conversation in his getaway car—how Harrison was replacing Sedric Torren as the First Party’s candidate for the New Reynes representative, how the monarchists actually held a strong chance of turning the election, how Harrison needed Levi’s influence to help him sway the North Side.

“He knows the only thing to your name is your bounty, right?” Jac asked. “Even if Chez is gone, that doesn’t mean the Irons will take you back.”

“It won’t be easy to convince the Irons to trust me again, but I have to try.”

“Why?” Jac demanded. “You’re wanted dead or alive, and playing Iron Lord will only make you more likely to get hanged.”

“Because if he wins, he’ll kill Vianca.”

Jac stilled.

The omerta marked the exact moment in Levi’s life when everything had gone wrong. Jac had spent years watching his friend scrape to hold his ambitions together while Vianca took everything from him. It was because of her scheme that the Irons had betrayed him. That Reymond was dead.

Which was precisely why Jac had been so furious that Levi would wager their friendship like that. Jac was one of the last good things Levi had left, and he’d basically offered that up to Vianca.

“That’s why you made the wager,” Jac realized out loud, “because Vianca was going to take away the Irons. And you—”

“Need them. Without the Irons, I can’t help Harrison. And if Harrison loses—”

“You stay trapped with Vianca,” Jac finished, his head spinning.

“That’s why I’m asking you to forgive me,” Levi said grimly. “And to help me.”

Jac had lost his home today. He’d colored his hair and changed his clothes. He’d said goodbye to the job he’d grown comfortable with, the places he liked to frequent and called his own. In the two years since he’d hit bottom, Jac had struggled every day to rebuild his life. So it had infuriated him to think that Levi—who had played a part in causing all of this—could feel even remotely happy about their newfound reputations while Jac lost everything.

But it was Vianca who got Levi invited to the Shadow Game. It was Vianca who’d thrown their friendship on the line.

Like Levi, Jac had a precise moment when his life had gone wrong. And it had taken nearly a year of heartache and rock bottoms, but Levi had helped tear Jac out of it. So it didn’t matter how many times Jac needed to start over—he would do the same for his best friend.

“Of course I’ll help,” Jac told him. “But what if Vianca finds out about Harrison?”

“She can’t. If she did...” He shuddered. “I’m telling no one but you.”

“It’s no wonder she loves you so much, if her son hates her enough to kill her,” Jac said, collapsing onto the other side of Levi’s bed. The cot creaked with his added weight. “You’re probably some sick replacement for him. The one who can never leave.”

Levi looked like he wanted to snort, but his expression turned serious. “There’s something else that Harrison needs, something I can’t provide him. Without it, it doesn’t matter how much I do for him—he’ll lose the election. He’s sure of it.”

Jac squinted. He didn’t know much about politics. “Like what?”

“The Torren Family’s influence will ultimately be what makes or breaks his victory. And with Sedric dead, it’s unclear who will end up the Family’s next don. It’s vital that Harrison is able to sponsor whoever wins. He asked me to watch the feud unfold from the inside, so he can make a clear bet on who that don will be.”

It was Levi’s expression, not his words, that gave him away. Levi only wore his poker face when playing cards or keeping secrets.

“And how will do you do that for him, Levi?” he asked softly, even though he’d already guessed the answer.

“He told me to ask someone I trust,” his friend answered, voice steady and practiced. “And you’re the only person I trust.”

Jac stood up abruptly and faced the wall farthest from Levi. Unlike him, Jac wasn’t skilled at hiding his emotions, and he wasn’t sure he could look at Levi right now with anything other than betrayal. Levi had saved him during the lowest points in his life, but now...he was asking Jac to return to them?

“No. No. I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you ask me,” Jac growled. If Levi was willing to make such a bold request, then he could at least say the words. If words were too terrible to utter out loud, then they shouldn’t be said at all.

Levi cleared his throat. “I’m asking you to be that person.”

The words did sound terrible when spoken, but it wasn’t the words themselves that left Jac so breathless. It was the strangled way that Levi said them.

“I’m sorry—” Levi started.

“You’re sorry?” he spat. “What were you thinking, agreeing to that?”

Jac tried to summon the anger Levi more than deserved. He should throw over every last shelf in this cellar, just to hear something crash.

But all he felt instead was guilt.

“I...” Levi paused as his voice cracked. “I made a mistake. I never should have assumed you’d do this.”

If Levi had any other friend in this city, Jac knew there would have been no question. Jac always said he would go down any road for Levi, but this was one road—the only road—that he’d sworn to himself he’d never cross again.

“Do you actually think I’m capable of this?” Jac asked. He liked to think he was stronger now. He’d survived Lullaby. He’d glued himself back together, piece by piece. He’d prayed hopeless prayers to never break again. But while their lives might have changed in two years, truthfully, the scars on his arms might as well have still been raw. Even once he’d sobered up, for months after, there’d been the drinking. The fighting. The smoking. And he’d still never kicked the last two.

Addiction had a way of changing courses like that. Jac was a far throw from lull trips in empty warehouse lots and taking his wages in stamps. But he wasn’t exactly clean, either. This morning and its two whole packs of cigarettes had been one of his worst in a while.

“That’s your decision,” Levi answered him. “Do you think you are?”

“You don’t get to ask me that now. You agreed to this with Harrison, so you must think I’m ready for it. Right?” Jac whipped around, expecting once again to see Levi’s poker face. Instead, Levi was anxiously flipping a business card over in his hands, and Jac swore, from his bloodshot eyes, that his friend might actually cry. It brought back painful memories of the last time Jac had seen him like this, the morning after Jac had nearly died in New Reynes North General Hospital.

That had been his lowest point.

Jac could forgive Levi for betting their friendship as a wager for his freedom.

But betting Jac’s health? His dignity? His life?

He didn’t know if he could ever forgive him for this.

But if he didn’t accept, he didn’t know if he could ever forgive himself, either.

“I trust you,” was all Levi said. It wasn’t exactly the enthusiastic vote of confidence Jac needed, but it was something. “It was wrong for me to agree to this without asking you, but I can still decline. There are more important things.”

“No, there aren’t.” Jac ripped the business card out of Levi’s hands. “If this was another scheme for volts or admirers, then I’d tell you to go to hell. But this is the end of Vianca. You’re the slickest, cleverest person I know. Watching the way she treats you... I thought she’d kill you today. And I felt like I couldn’t even stop it, not without killing us both.” The way Levi had simply stood there as he choked, standing his ground like he’d been in that position many times before, made Jac delirious with fury. “Of course I’ll do it. Anything is worth seeing her rot.”

Levi’s smile was bright even as he blinked back tears. He gradually lowered himself onto his back, as though every inch brought its own pain, and stared up at the ceiling.

“You’re worth more to me than all the other Irons put together,” Levi told him, and it was the best thank-you Jac had ever received.

“Yeah, well, you better be able to handle them when I’m gone. If I’m spending all my time at Luckluster Casino, I won’t be able to save you from Chez a second time.”

“Don’t worry. Next time you see the Irons, they’ll be the richest gang in the North Side.” The determined sound to Levi’s voice took Jac back. If he closed his eyes, they could have been thirteen years old again, fantasizing about all the fortune their futures held. Now Jac couldn’t envision their futures with anything other than dread.

“Did you tell Enne about Harrison?” Jac asked. After all, Vianca’s death would free her, too.

“No,” Levi said firmly. “That would only give Vianca another opportunity to find out. It’s better that Enne doesn’t know, for both our sakes.”

Jac agreed with that, but he was still surprised. It didn’t seem like Enne and Levi kept secrets from each other.

Jac let several moments pass before he worked up his nerve. Because yes, Jac would do absolutely anything for Levi, but that didn’t change the fact that what Levi had asked of him was almost unthinkable. Had it been anything short of this prize, it would have been despicable. But this was the price it took to end Vianca Augustine.

And if Levi’s suffering was worth all of this, then Jac refused to watch him walk down a path that would only lead to more heartache. Especially when that path was so obviously what the donna wanted.

“Can I ask you a favor, when I’m gone?” Jac asked.

“Anything,” Levi replied quickly.

“Don’t be with Enne.” Even as he noticed Levi tense beside him, Jac didn’t let himself falter. “Vianca used me to play with you, and she already suspects that you’re both together. Don’t give her any more ways to hurt you. To hurt both of you.”

It took Levi several seconds to say anything, and when he did, his voice was strained. “Of course. I said anything. And you’re...you’re right.”

“It’s better for both of you.”

“Until Vianca is gone.”

Jac cringed at the hope in Levi’s voice, but he didn’t take his request back.

After a few minutes, Levi’s breathing slowed into a rhythmic sleep. Jac shifted uncomfortably, his heart racing with an all too familiar dread. Although he desperately wanted to sleep, for the next several hours, the sensation of drifting off terrified him. Every time he felt his consciousness slip, he yanked it back, as though he might fall off the edge. His mind kept revisiting the same memories over and over, unraveling the threads he’d spent years knotting.

When he did eventually sleep, he did so fitfully. It wasn’t deep sleep. It certainly wasn’t a lull.

And for the second night in a row, Jac Mardlin dreamed of his own death.

ENNE

Church bells tolled across Olde Town, making the wrought-iron gates and window bars tremble. Everything in Olde Town was sharp—the spindly towers, the spear-like points atop the fences, the crumbling spires. It was a neighborhood of thorns and barbed wire. And with every new haunting graveyard or condemned building that Enne passed, she wondered how Levi and Jac could possibly be so fond of this place.

The address Levi had given her over the phone this morning led her down the Street of the Holy Tombs, to an abandoned, overgrown park and an impressive marble building hidden among the trees. She tread up its stone steps and peered at the graffiti painted over its once beautiful oak doors. The building was grand enough to be a palace, with the columns and sweeping windows to match. But over a period of probably many years, after hurricanes and infestations and general waste, Olde Town had swallowed it whole.

The door creaked open, making Enne jolt, and Levi peered out with a smirk. “Did I spook you?”

Enne hmphed and straightened her skirts. “What is this place?”

“The remnants of an art museum that was looted and closed during the Revolution,” Levi explained. Then he grinned. “Pretty swanky, right?”

Enne slipped inside. The floor was coated in dust and broken glass, and the magnificent dome ceiling was home to several bats. “That wouldn’t have been my first descriptor.”

“Well, it’s vacant, and no one comes here,” he said, shrugging. “The Scarhands have Scrap Market. The Doves have...whatever hole they crawl out of. So the first thing on both our agendas should be finding our own places to claim. This is right in the middle of Olde Town, safe, large—”

“You intend for people to live here?” Enne asked in disbelief.

“Yes, myself included.”

“It’s filthy.”

“There’s history here.”

“Not anymore.”

Levi cracked his neck. “Then there will be.” He made for the stairs and motioned for her to follow. “Come on.”

They climbed to the third, top floor, where a large set of windows offered a magnificent view of the Brint, and, beyond it, the glittering skyscrapers of the Financial District. The stairwell forked, leading to two separate hallways, each one lined with rooms.

“This is it,” Levi declared, rubbing his hands together. “I have a good feeling.”

Enne grimaced at a dead rat on the floor. “Your good feelings are not to be trusted.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’ll be happy to know I did do some thinking last night on how I’m going to help you.”

“That’s interesting you say that,” she said, trailing after him as he continued down the hall. For someone so injured, he walked very fast, and she suspected he was running on nothing but his delusions of grandeur. “Because I have an idea myself.”

She rummaged around in her purse. It was filled with invitations Vianca had recently sent her for political salons and parties in the South Side, some of them dated as soon as two weeks from now. She dug around them and found the worn edges of The City of Sin, a Guidebook: Where To Go and Where Not To. She pulled it out and flipped to the map.

“The gangs have each claimed a neighborhood of the North Side. You have Olde Town and the Casino District. The Scarhands have the Factory District. The Doves have the Deadman District. But no one has this one.” She held up the book and tapped the Ruins District, in the northwest corner of the map.

“That’s because no one goes there,” Levi said. “It’s where the royal family and the nobles used to live. It’s just rat nests and empty estates now. The Faithful think it’s cursed.”