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—”
