“Pup, you know how much I love doing business with you,” Jonas said, and his voice sounded slimy even through the receiver. “But I’m still making calls. You’re not the only one in the North Side suddenly scrambling for new identification papers.”
Levi slammed his fist on his desk. Since Enne had left this morning, his phone had rung every other minute with another concerned casino manager trying to cancel their contracts due to the lockdown on the North Side. The talent registration period would begin in three days’ time, and until the “violent crime lords were apprehended and brought to justice,” all those with either a blood or split Talent of Mysteries were required to be home by nine o’clock. All others, ten o’clock.
This is only a temporary situation, Levi had repeated over and over this morning.We’ll have it under control soon.But, of course, he’d been lying through his teeth. The wigheads had sent a military force to patrol the North Side, and the only thing the lords could do was wait until the tension died down.
“We can’t work without those papers,” Levi grunted.
“You’re supposed to be rich now, aren’t you? Surely you can get by for two weeks.”
Two weeks, sure. But if all the casinos pulled out, how would they get by after?
“And you’re supposed to be the most connected person in the city,” Levi countered. “I don’t see why—”
“You think you’re the only one with these problems?” Jonas shouted. “Scrap Market has been permanently shut down—the Scarhands are scattered across the city. I’m sitting in a basement closet with fourteen different phone lines, all ringing with calls from my clients and suppliers, but you know which one rings the most?Yours.So maybe you could try solving some of my problems before you expect me to solve yours.”
Levi pressed his head against the desk. He didn’t have any clever ideas. Not this time.
Sure enough, Levi made out the ringing of another phone in the background. “Do you really think I’m taking custom orders right now?” he heard Jonas bark to some other client.
“Well, smart-ass?” Jonas snapped, once again on Levi’s line. “You got a solution for me?”
“We’re all mucked!” Levi growled and slammed the receiver back down.
As soon as he did, his phone rang again. He ripped the cord out of the wall and collapsed onto his bed. It was hard to believe he and Enne had lain here only two nights before, talking as if the rest of the world didn’t exist, when really, the rest of the world was ending.
* * *
In his dream, Levi’s footsteps echoed down the alternating black-and-white tiles of the hallway. He approached a white door, hoping it held the answers he needed, but all it contained was a nightmare.
Levi’s father had a regal face, with wide, square features, a strong jaw, and brown skin like Levi’s own. He wore the same linen tunic whenever he worked as an orb-maker, the one with gold embroidery along the collar—finer than anything else they owned. Their family home was just a collection of cheap furniture and hidden treasures. It’d also felt empty since his mother died. Levi still slept in the bedroom across the hall from his father, but no one had truly lived in this place for over a year.
“So when will you leave?” his father asked him, startling Levi from the book he read. Levi quickly concealed his surprise—and his guilt—and molded his face into something expressionless. He’d gotten good at doing that. “That’s what you’re planning to do, right? To leave?”
“No,” Levi lied.
“Don’t lie to me.” His father ripped the book out of Levi’s hands. Levi carefully sat up from his seat, in case he’d need to run. “You think you can go anywhere? There are restrictions on this family, even if you might pretend you’re not part of it.”
Levi wasn’t pretending. He was rejecting. He’d spent years listening to his father’s stories about the Revolution, about the tragic events that had led them to this miserable house on a cliff so far from their original home. He’d listened, and he rejected it. He rejected his father’s victimized apologies for the plates, the windows, the bones he’d broken. He rejected his father’s claims that the Mizers had been fair rulers, when history told otherwise. He rejected the idea that he was trapped here, bound to this same house, to this same tragedy.
“I’m going to New Reynes,” he said quietly.
His father started toward him, but Levi had already stood up and backed into the parlor.
“You know what they did to all the orb-makers who served the queen in Reynes?” his father asked. “They hanged them.”
That had been twenty years ago. Another tragedy Levi refused to claim.
His father reached for the book Levi had left on the cushions. It was thick, with sharp leather edges and a real weight to it.
As freeing as it’d seemed to reject the Glaisyer name, it hadn’t felt so simple to leave. That night, he cried out of guilt the entire train ride to New Reynes, his ticket bought by one of his father’s treasures that he’d stolen and sold. He cried because its new owner wouldn’t understand what it meant. They wouldn’t know that Levi’s grandfather’s head had been hanged like an ornament from the palace walls before they’d burned. They wouldn’t know that Levi’s father had smuggled the treasure in his shoes when he fled the city. They wouldn’t know the story because it was tragic, and no one wanted to hear a tragic story, Levi least of anyone.
That was why his new life wouldn’t begin with tragedy. In the legend he planned on writing for himself, he had come from nothing. He whispered it under his breath so often that, by the time his train pulled to a stop in the City of Sin’s North Side, he’d even begun to believe it.
* * *
Levi woke from his unpleasant nap to find Jac standing over him. He jolted and sat up. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?” He shook out the grogginess in his head and looked out the window. It was still daylight, so he couldn’t have slept for long.
“Nice to see you, too,” Jac said, a strange edge to his voice.
