City of Spells (Into the Crooked Place #2) - Alexandra Christo Page 0,31

told me to distribute it out among the other buskers, but the amityguards have been right on my ass, so I haven’t had the chance.”

Tavia wanted to feel relief at that, but she knew she couldn’t. It didn’t matter if Nolan had sold only a few elixirs in Rishiya and if no other buskers in the city had their hands on it yet, because buskers across the whole of the realm, from Kythnu to the government city of Yejlath, had backpacks full of the stuff.

The elixir was spreading like an infection and they didn’t have a cure.

It wasn’t coming: It was here already.

“Whether you kill me or not, you’re still going to lose,” Nolan said.

Tavia stared down at the bleeding busker.

She put away her knife and got Wesley’s gun back out from her belt loop.

The buskers wanted her to kill Nolan; they expected her to. She’d gotten all she needed from him and he was nothing if not a liability. She couldn’t trust him to stay here and she couldn’t let him back out on the streets now that he knew where their rebellion was.

They have to fear me, she thought. That’s the only way they’ll follow me.

Tavia wasn’t good at inspirational speeches like Saxony and she didn’t have that air about her that made people flock to her side like Wesley did. All Tavia had was a prisoner and Wesley’s gun.

“I thought your side was all about peace,” Nolan said. “Are you really going to kill me here?”

The look in his eyes said that he truly didn’t know what Tavia was capable of. And of course he couldn’t, because she didn’t know either.

Tavia had always thought she was above the buskers and the likes of anyone who patrolled Creije and ruined lives because they wanted to rise to the top. She’d only ever wanted to escape and find a family in her home realm of Volo. But she could see now, how someone could get lost in this maze of power.

How easy it was to forget yourself when so many people had their eyes on you.

“What are you doing?”

Tavia all but jumped out of her skin at the sound of the new voice so close to her ear. She turned with wide eyes to see Karam.

“Gods damn it,” Tavia said in a hard voice. “You scared me to death.”

She pressed her free hand to her chest to see if her heart was still beating, because she was sure it had stopped.

“You seem pretty alive to me,” Karam said.

Tavia gave her a sullen look.”What are you doing out of bed and wandering around at this time of night?”

“I was looking for you.”

“That’s sweet,”Tavia said.”But I’m a little busy right now. Let’s talk later.”

Karam looked at the bloody Nolan. “Torturing a new prisoner?” she asked.

Tavia cleared her throat and kept her chin high. “Hardly torture,” she said. “We were just softening him up a little.”

“We,” Karam repeated.

She looked around at the couple of dozen buskers who surrounded them in a circle. Karam’s glare was palpable and even though the buskers outnumbered her, they looked hesitant to even meet her gaze.

“Go to bed,” Karam told them. “I have private matters to discuss with your new leader.”

The buskers shuffled a little, perhaps from nerves at whether or not to disobey an order from Creije’s best fighter and probably the most deadly person in camp. But also, Tavia suspected, because they weren’t quite satisfied with how little blood had been spilled tonight.

They were hungry for war and revenge, and Nolan was the right kind of scumbag to take it out on.

“Do as she says,” Tavia told them.

The buskers nodded—a few sighed, some grumbled a little—and then they dispersed, begrudgingly heading back to their beds and to a night filled with dreams instead of death.

Only when they had gone and it was just Tavia, Karam, and the still-bleeding Nolan did Karam speak again.

“I told you to stop being reckless,” she said. “First you go into the city and take on a group of buskers alone and now you bring one straight into our camp to torture? What are you thinking?”

“He had information,” Tavia said. “And I did what was necessary to get it.”

“You sound like Wesley.”

“Maybe it’s about time one of us did.”

“I know that you are frustrated and I am too. I understand that we need to get him back, but this is not the way,” Karam said. “Tavia, you need to—”

Karam stopped, and for a moment, Tavia wondered what could possibly make their