King Of Fools. Amanda Foody

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СКАЧАТЬ Game, obscuring all but her black lips.

      Her bounty is five hundred volts more than mine, he noted sourly.

      Still, they made quite a handsome duo on the front page. Looking at them, that same feeling of inevitability stirred inside him. For a moment, he let himself fantasize about destiny, about how his and Enne’s were intertwined, about how badly he wished to intertwine them further. He knew he shouldn’t—couldn’t. Falling for Enne held its own dangers.

      Levi eased his grip on the gun. If this man was an assailant, he wouldn’t be updating Levi on today’s current events. Still, Levi didn’t let go of the weapon. Not yet.

      “We’ve never met, Pup, but I know your reputation,” the man started. Levi quietly seethed. He hated that nickname. It came from his split talent—his weaker talent—for sensing auras, but he hardly smelled auras like a dog, like everyone assumed. The nickname was just another way to belittle him. The North Side had always viewed him as a kid playing gangster. “I didn’t think you’d be the quiet type.”

      “I’m still guessing at your name.” Still guessing at why a stranger had hijacked Levi’s getaway, if not to collect the reward.

      “How quickly the city’s forgotten.” The man pouted, a rather strange look for someone his age. He didn’t seem to wear his years comfortably. “But I should think you, of all people, would see the family resemblance. Why do you think it was so easy for me to intercept your car?” He inspected Levi. “I’m told you’re my mother’s favorite.”

      Harrison Augustine. Vianca’s estranged only child and the Augustine Family prince. It was easy now to spot the resemblance. They carried the same serious, noble features, the same paleness that revealed the green of their veins snaking across their foreheads and necks. He even spoke like his mother, purring names as if he owned them.

      If he was anything like Vianca, then he couldn’t be trusted.

      “I know who you are now,” Levi said. “But I still don’t know why you’re here.”

      Harrison tapped the newspaper’s front page. “You and this Séance character, escaping the impossible Shadow Game and killing both the Chancellor and Sedric Torren in a single night. You’re the talk of the town. As soon as I heard what happened, I knew I had to meet you.”

      Levi stared at the man and reflected on his words. Even without his inheritance or his mother’s empire, Harrison was powerful. The Augustine and Torren crime Families were notorious in New Reynes, and Harrison, in his eighteen years of absence, had graduated from prince to mystery. No one knew why he’d left or what he’d been doing since.

      Yet here he sat, claiming he needed to meet Levi, of all people. If he was after the bounty, then this seemed a roundabout way of acquiring it. But he’d made a mistake if he thought Levi had anything to offer him. Levi had nothing but the stolen clothes on his back.

      “They used to say this city is a game,” Harrison mused, drawing a cigar from his pocket. He offered one to Levi, but Levi shook his head. He hated smoking. “Do they still say that?”

      “They do.”

      “Even so, New Reynes must’ve changed a lot.” Harrison lit the cigar, and the car filled with its musky odor. “A seventeen-year-old street lord. I’m impressed you’ve survived this long.”

      Levi stiffened, even though he was used to this sort of condescension. “I survived the Shadow Game. The Chancellor is dead—”

      “Yes, yes.” Harrison blew a cloud of smoke in Levi’s face, making his eyes water as he scrunched his nose and held in the urge to cough. “And street lords who kill chancellors don’t live long. So tell me—why should I bet on you? Even though you were the one who killed the Chancellor?”

      Levi narrowed his eyes. Was Harrison trying to test him? “I don’t know where you got such an idea, but—”

      “Don’t play coy. The papers say that Séance killed him, but I know the truth. I have friends in the House of Shadows.” Yet another reason not to trust him. Maybe this was death coming for Levi after all. He kept his hand on his gun. “They’re embarrassed. Chancellor Semper, the revered Father of the Revolution, killed by some scrappy card dealer? But this Séance character... Well, she’s a more impressive villain.”

      Levi’s moral compass didn’t point north past the North Side, but if it was Séance’s identity that Harrison wanted, he would never give that up. Besides, Levi felt he was an impressive enough character in his own right.

      “I’m sorry the wigheads feel that way,” Levi answered, unable to resist the empty boast. “I’m sure they’ll find me a formidable enemy.”

      “That’s what I’m hoping.”

      Levi’s spirits lifted at those words. No one ever saw potential in him. Right now he could barely see potential in himself.

      Harrison turned the page of the newspaper.

      SENATE CALLS FOR WAR ON THE GANGS

      “War is a strong word,” Levi murmured.

      “It’s been said before,” Harrison replied. “And it’s why I’m here.”

      Before the Great Street War eighteen years ago, two street lords, Veil and Havoc, had ruled the city like kings. It was the golden age of New Reynes crime. But then the wigheads had forced the North Side to its knees, and both of the lords were hanged in Liberty Square in a spectacle of justice and judgment. Ever since then, gangs like the Irons, the Scarhands, and the Doves had attempted to replicate those empires of old. But no one had succeeded, in part because the North Side had never truly recovered from the war, or from the Revolution seven years before it.

      “They’ve talked about clearing out the gangs for years,” Levi said.

      “The Chancellor was assassinated by—as the city dubs you both—two street lords,” Harrison said. “This isn’t just talk. It’s a promise. And the war has already begun.”

      Nerves quivered in Levi’s chest, and he had the urge to raise his hand to his throat to assure himself there was no noose knotted around it. New Reynes had raised him on its legends; he knew the Great Street War’s bloodbath as if he’d lived it.

      He scanned the rest of the article, which included the bounties not just of Levi and Séance, but the other lords and seconds, as well. It was the most informative write-up of the gangs he’d encountered since Enne’s unusual and questionable tourist guidebook.

      Levi grinned. His bounty was the same as Scavenger’s and Ivory’s. Even so, he had a few grievances with the article. For one, the Orphan Guild wasn’t a gang—it was an enterprise. Second, breaking the law once hardly made Enne a criminal mastermind. And last, his title wasn’t Pup; it was the Iron Lord.

      To his shock, each of those named also had a wanted poster—other than Ivory, of course, as no one alive had ever glimpsed her face. Levi’s pulse hammered as he studied each of them. In comparison to their fairer features, like those of the majority in New Reynes, Levi’s brown skin stuck out. He would be easier to spot, and more at risk.

      Then СКАЧАТЬ