PART I
RISK
2
“After the executioner lowered Veil’s body from the gallows, he claimed he couldn’t remove the wrappings covering Veil’s face. He used to wear that black gauze all around his head, you know? Well, the executioner said he couldn’t take it off. That it was part of Veil’s face like his own skin.”
—A legend of the North Side
LEVI
Ten hours after escaping the Shadow Game, Levi Glaisyer found his destiny slapped onto the side of a dumpster behind St. Morse Casino.
Criminal Wanted Dead or Alive
Accomplice in the Assassination of the Chancellor
If asked, Levi would deny believing in destiny. Five years on the streets of the City of Sin had taught him that destiny and luck were for the desperate and the thickheaded. As a card dealer, he’d often encountered believers bemoaning the mirrors they’d shattered or the white cats they’d passed. They’d rub lucky coins between their fingers or kiss the shriveled remains of a rabbit’s foot, praying for divine intervention in a game that Levi had already rigged.
For Levi, when the cards no longer ran in his favor, he cheated—simple as that. Luck was a mechanism to be devised, and luck and destiny were merely two sides of the same coin.
Yet as he stared at the wanted poster, sirens wailing across New Reynes in search of him, he couldn’t deny that something felt inevitable about this moment. The thought made his heart pound, even with the Augustine bodyguard looming beside him. Everything in Levi’s life, all his dreams and follies and tragedies, had led to this afternoon, to this alley, to this poster, to this single flip of destiny’s coin.
Dead?
Or alive?
Maybe he was meant for more, the feeling of inevitability whispered to him. Maybe this was his new beginning.
He checked his watch. His new beginning was late.
At half past noon, the Casino District was unusually vacant. Gone were the unlucky gamblers, the slovenly drunks, the outrageous street performers, the wandering tourists. The honest and the crooked, the naïve and the wicked had all found their ways home to sleep off whiskey hangovers and mourn empty purses, leaving backwash-filled bottles and half-smoked cigars clustered in the gutters. Despite the lack of patrons, the street’s neon signs continued to flash, the ragtime music continued to hum, and the shows continued to play. No matter who you were, what you’d done, or how little you had, Tropps Street was open for your business.
It was remarkably hot in New Reynes today, even for the mid-June afternoon. Levi’s bodyguard wiped the sweat collecting from his brow and aired out his reeking shirt.
Levi didn’t know or trust this man. But anyone who worked for Vianca Augustine—the owner of St. Morse Casino and the donna of the notorious Augustine crime Family—knew better than to cross her. Regardless of the three-thousand-volt bounty on Levi’s head, this man would follow Vianca’s orders and protect him. Greed always answered to fear.
Again, Levi checked his watch. He’d pace if he weren’t so exhausted and achy from his collection of injuries: two broken ribs, a black eye, several bruises, and a bandaged knife wound. The City of Sin hadn’t been merciful to him these past few days.
After he and Enne had escaped from the Shadow Game and returned to St. Morse, he’d managed a mere five hours of shut-eye before the bodyguard had knocked on Enne’s apartment door and informed Levi that his ride to Zula Slyk’s safe house would soon arrive. Zula owned an illegal monarchist newspaper in Olde Town and, several days prior, had been the one to coldly inform Enne that her mother was dead. If Levi had a choice, he’d never see that heartless woman again. But thanks to Vianca’s unbreakable omerta, Levi never had a choice. Zula’s was safe. What mattered right now was moving from here to there without meeting trouble along the way.
But Zula Slyk was the least of his problems.
For the past two years, Levi had been running an investment scam, which was how he’d earned the enemies who’d invited him to the Shadow Game. Once the scam started to crumble, all he’d wanted was to clean it up so he could focus on his gang, the Irons.
He still wanted that. To build his empire, just as he’d always dreamed.
But Levi was in a predicament. The lords of the other two gangs were wanted criminals as well, but Ivory and Scavenger could count on the loyalty and protection of their associates for their safety, whereas half the Irons would probably sell Levi out simply to watch him hang. If Levi was spending all his time trapped under Zula’s watch, he’d have no shot at rebuilding his gang. He’d broken out of one cage only to stumble into another.
He tore the wanted poster from the dumpster and crumpled it in his fist.
Maybe he was meant for nothing.
A swanky Amberlite motorcar appeared at the mouth of the alley, painted black and matte as if coated in gunpowder. Levi ducked closer to his bodyguard. Vianca had scheduled his ride, and Vianca didn’t do inconspicuous. The car had no metallic fixtures or studded bumpers to be seen. It could be a trap.
Once the car eased deeper into the alley, the driver’s window rolled down and a gloved hand beckoned Levi inside. Beside him, the bodyguard nodded for Levi to depart. Apparently this was his scheduled ride after all.
Wanted men don’t do flashy, Levi reminded himself oh, so tragically.
He groaned in pain as he slid onto the plush leather of the back seat and shut the door. The motorcar lurched forward, leaving the St. Morse escort behind.
Inside was utter darkness.
As his eyes adjusted, he took in a shape in the seat across from him and realized, breath catching, that his private getaway wasn’t so private.
He snapped the fingers of one hand, sparking a faint flame that offered a pinch of light—one of the few useful tricks his orb-making blood talent provided him.
His other hand instinctively felt for his pistol.
The man looked nearly forty. A patch concealed his left eye, but there was no hiding the ugly pink scar that snaked across his brow into his receding copper hairline. His skin was fair, his gray trench coat designed by Ulani Maxirello, and his teeth whiter than a tooth-polish advertisement.
“It was time we met,” the man said, as if assuming Levi already knew his identity.
Levi never forgot a face, and although he’d never seen this man before, there was something familiar about him. Perhaps in the reptilian green of his remaining eye. In the sharp slant of his nose, the narrow shape of his jawline. Even if his individual features were neither unattractive nor unsettling, collectively and without explanation, his appearance made Levi’s skin crawl.
Maybe this wasn’t his scheduled ride after all.
“Let’s not have any trouble,” Levi warned, clicking the safety off his gun loud enough for his companion to hear.
Rather than reacting to Levi’s threat, the man tossed him that day’s copy of The Crimes & The Times. Levi’s heart skipped several beats as he examined the matching wanted posters on the front page: him and Séance, whom he knew better as Enne Salta. She’d arrived in New Reynes only ten days ago, but since then, she’d managed to earn a more noteworthy reputation than Levi had in five years. In the portrait, Enne had on the same silk mask she’d worn during the Shadow Game, obscuring all but her black lips.