“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.

Скачать книгу