Corruption

by Adam Vine

  I thought I was smarter than that, but I guess I’m not. I said it back, I reminded myself. But why? All the signs were there she was full of it, and I still believed her. Why did I do this to myself, when there were so many red flags telling me I should’ve walked away?

  Jesus Christ, what is wrong with me? That’s what Ink would say. This isn’t me. This isn’t who I am. My life isn’t over. What’s that line I just translated from Arkadius that I liked so much? “Every sin has its price,/ Some are great, some are small, / But the debt is inescapable / And eventually comes to call.”

  That was written in the 1200s. Why am I only now figuring it out? I ignored my moral compass and was a selfish asshole. Now I have to take the hit for my mistake, like last time. And if she really is the toxic one in this relationship, why does my heart hurt this much?

  By the third night, I was feeling well enough to get out of bed and go for a walk. I went to the Old Town, looked for Kashka on the Main Square, at the corner of St. John’s Street, by the King’s Gate, even under the high, gothic arches of the basilica, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. I hadn’t eaten anything but scrambled eggs for the past three days, so I got a kebab and wandered the empty, spider-woven streets, picking at the greasy meat and sauce-smothered veggies with my fork and staring into the faces of the strangers all passing like ghost ships in the mist.

  Eventually, I accepted the fact that Kashka was gone. By the time I started walking home, it was snowing.

  BENEATH THE MASK

  THE CISTERN VILLAGE was smaller than Hyro expected, little more than a few clusters of earthen brick houses and tents surrounding an open common. Huge stone pillars gave the villagers some cover as they fought and begged and fled, but like all the other little vermin eking out such a freezing, starving existence here in the Burrow - Hyro could not call it living - the villagers here had forgotten the first rule of war. They did not know their enemy.

  The Ratkeeper stalked the scurrying, dying rebels through a dream of rows of burning slum houses and screaming children, and they could not escape him, could not do anything but die. Dreams are the will of the Spiral in raw, crude form. There is never any question about where to go, only the oneiric magnetism of purpose. Hyro-called-Ratkeeper did not hunt them with his eyes. Hyro had no eyes to see, only the mask.

  The Brave Ones before him now were brave indeed, but they were not warriors. Old men and boys too gray of beard and weak of branch, all gnashing teeth, guttural challenges, and shaking hands barely strong enough to keep a grip on their own rattling farm tools.

  The dozen of them who were still standing were huddled behind a makeshift shield wall, blocking his path to the last cluster of houses that were not on fire. Was this the force the Vermin expected to keep the home fires burning? They weren’t even properly armed. He made a quick survey of their weaponry. Here was an axe, there a scythe, at last a shoddy rake - no, a rusty heirloom sword was there too, bearing a dozen unrepaired notches. The shields were even poorer than their arms, some large pots and pans, a few reclaimed doors to houses now burning elsewhere in the cistern.

  One old man with an impressive mustache hissed a curse and spat over the shield wall. Interesting that the worst possible condemnation for these people was a nickname his own sovereign called him in friendliness.

  He threw his chain and took the old man out at the knees. A spray of blood spattered and froze at his feet. The line of old men and boys slithered back a few paces to keep the distance, scurrying to stay low as they closed their ranks tighter. One of them yelped, “Father!” but an older, wiser hand pulled him back behind the shield wall before he could break away.

  The Ratkeeper advanced.

  If such unhewn boys and rotten old bags as this really were all the Vermin could afford to man the smaller settlements, then why, Hyro wondered, was the Lord Master concerned with an invasion plan at all? Why perform such black-hearted missions, such as murdering women, children, and the dregs of the Burrow’s men? Why not send him, Hyro the Black Ward, who once commanded legions of men ten thousand strong to incalculable victories in half a hundred countries back on Home, into the heart of the Burrow with a hundred of the Amber City’s hardest elites and simply take the rebellion’s headquarters by force?

  Yes, Hyro already knew. Because the Little Lord Master didn’t trust him.

  The crying boy got bold again and opened his section of the shield wall to throw a thrust with his spear, not much more than a sharpened wooden pole with a Wyvernwood knife lashed to the end. The boy howled, “For the Vermin!” and then a name.

  He froze the boy with a breath, then shattered him into a maelstrom of hail. The freezing was the most humane way to pacify little Vermin that Hyro had yet found. He did not want his victims to suffer.

  But the Brave Ones grew agitated all the same. They desperately broke form and rushed him, blades and war cries filling the smoky air of the cistern, and the Ratkeeper pacified them each in turn.

  He was doing them a mercy.

  But it was they who’d chosen to go about it the hard way, was it not? Yes, it was. It was better when they gave into their fear and let him trap them, ran themselves into corners or down dead ends where they could no longer flee or hide. Then he would take the ones he wanted in the soft amber glow of his lamp, and gently, peacefully give those he didn’t want back to the Spiral.

  Peaceful equilibrium is always better for both parties. Or is it?

  When all of them were pacified or contained by the lamp, the Ratkeeper advanced.

  He sensed movement to his right. The chain swept down and shattered one of the houses that wasn’t on fire into a cloud of orange-red debris. A scream inside was cut suddenly short; then, a death rattle. The Blot told him it was a mother and her two children hiding beneath the cellar stairs. The mother and one of the children died instantly. The other…

  The little girl sprinted through the back door. She was fast, despite a heavy limp from a freshly wounded right leg. Hyro struggled with himself whether or not to kill the child. The girl was seven, maybe eight years old. With her wound, she would be hard to move across the frozen wasteland of the Surface, but Hyro was not in the habit of letting prisoners escape. Yet.

  But something was different this time. There was the book - yes, the Glass Book and all its pretty little secrets. There was the Little Lord Master’s lies, not so pretty, no. There was the Visitor and the other one with all her precious little reasons for running. Different, yes. The rings were growing, stretching, becoming…

  The fragment faded.

  The running girl was making for one of the tunnels nearby. But human legs could not hope to match the speed of a Blotling traveling in Slow Time. Before the child could take another step, the Ratkeeper blocked her path and held his lamp into her face. A golden glow swelled in the wideness of the child’s eyes. Then she was still. If the girl had escaped, it could have meant dire consequences for the plans ahead. Whatever such temptation Hyro may have had vanished. If he had let a rebel prisoner escape, it would be…

  No. He couldn’t…

  But he could, couldn’t he?

  No.

  Yes.

  But it would be…

  There was that word again, like a splinter slowly working its way under the clay edges of his mask. The word he dare not consider, lest all he was be destroyed in the unraveling.

  He would take the girl to the Amber City, yes. Not to cold, miserable Ganheim where she would likely die of starvation or disease before she could be Transformed. The Amber City would give her a good life. Children always made the best gifts for the Lord Master. If they were the right age and had no prevailing health issues, they could be successfully indoctrinated back into elevated society. Some became successful citizens. In rare cases, the Lord Master gave them special positions among the regime when they got older, making them his advisors, cupbearers, elite bodyguards, and - yes – even his lovers.

  Positions of honor.

  Honor that had once been H
yro’s.

  But there was still much work to do to cleanse the village. There would be time later to become lost in the dream. Now was the time to let the dream move him.

  An object had fallen from the girl’s fingertips when her body wilted under the lamp. Hyro stopped to pick it up. It was a doll.

  The doll was in the shape of a rat. It was hand-woven from sheep’s wool dyed charcoal gray, with buttons for eyes, white thread for its little, gnawing teeth, and was that…? Yes, gold thread to form a makeshift crown. A rat king doll, Hyro reflected with amusement. No. Not a rat king. A rat queen. An expensive toy, likely the only thing of value the girl – perhaps her whole family - had owned.

  Hyro let the rat queen doll drop back in the mud and took his new prisoner to join the others already gathered in the village’s central common. And there the doll remained, long after the flames had grown and consumed the cistern village and the chorus of agony had faded, forgotten in the shadows and then eventually, the silence.

  THE CITY

  “ARE YOU OKAY?”

  I looked up from the coffee I was brewing, my third double espresso of the morning, to see a strange, gangly little man leaning on the counter next to the coffee maker. He had tiny, flinty eyes and greasy hair. His skin was deathly pale, and a half-mowed lawn of gray perma-stubble clung to his neck. He wore a Star Wars t-shirt, cutoff jean shorts, despite the freezing cold weather outside, and the ugliest pair of closed-toe leather sandals I’d ever seen rising out of a pair of knee-high white cotton socks.

  “Uh… sorry, what?” I said.

  The little man waved at me with the huge, steaming mug of tea in his right hand. “You were out sick for a long time. I asked if you are feeling better.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Thanks for noticing. I’m feeling much better now,” I said.

  “Do you remember my name?”

  I’d seen him around the office before. He introduced himself to me my first day here. It starts with a K… Karl? Krzysztof? No, there a million Krzysztofs here, but he isn’t one of them. This is the asshole that’s supposed to be illustrating Arkadius. Only, he hasn’t turned anything in yet. I’m supposed to have a meeting with Filip later today to discuss some problems with the book… probably because we don’t have much to show, other than my translations.

  The tiny man helped me out by saying, “Karol. Or Lolek for short.”

  “Thanks. Sorry. I’m terrible with names,” I said. “I’m…”

  “Dan. Everyone knows your name,” Lolek said. He took a long sip of tea and made a face like he’d just chugged from a bottle of vodka.

  “Really? No one ever talks to me at this company,” I said.

  “Yes, because they are shy. Most of them aren’t very comfortable speaking English,” Lolek said. “And, you know, it’s publishing. Most people came here from a video game publisher. A big office closed near here recently, about…” his eyes shifted toward the ceiling, then back to me like two lead pellets rolling in a bowl, “Maybe three months ago?”

  I nodded. “I see. So, Lolek… we’re supposed to be working together on this book project, except, I haven’t seen anything from you since I got here. Are you planning to show me any of your illustrations?”

  Lolek’s smile dwindled. “Everything’s on the wiki. Mostly sketches. Do you not have access to our wiki site?”

  “I have no idea what that is. I mean, I know what a wiki is, I just didn’t know we have one,” I said.

  Lolek chuckled. “Man… you were right. No one tells you anything.”

  When he saw I wasn’t laughing, he said, “But actually, this is why I came downstairs. I’m working on some concept art for the demon - you know, this one that sits on the king’s shoulder and controls him?” Lolek hunched his back and made a demon face, gesticulating like a puppet master with his fingers. I chuckled despite myself.

  Lolek straightened up. “Anyway, I could use some feedback. You’re translating the poem, so I thought you would be the guy to ask.”

  I took my mug out from the coffee maker. “Lead the way.”

  We went upstairs to Lolek’s workstation. His computer had two brand-new, top-of-the-line flat panel monitors, both leagues nicer than the one I had, and a $500 drawing tablet. He opened the file on his desktop called koszmar.bmp (“koszmar” was the Countryish word for “Nightmare,” which was the demon’s name). Brilliant shades of red, orange, and burnished gold filled the screen, broken by black and gray smoke drawn with eye-popping detail.

  Christ, this guy is talented.

  I thought the image would be of Nightmare hovering over King Mirek’s shoulder as he sat the throne in the Black Tower, because the King’s possession was one of the story’s major arcs. But the image was a portrait.

  In it, Nightmare stood alone on a field of smoke and flame. He wore hooded black robes that fell around his inhumanly tall, slender form like creeping shadows. The belt around his waist was made of braided human hair. On his feet were snip-toed boots like the kind ninjas wore to silence their footsteps, and on his face, a mask, the details of which Lolek hadn’t filled in yet. One of the hands was also unfinished. The other carried a bundle of dead rats tied together by the tails.

  Lolek’s depiction of the demon was exactly how I had pictured the character while reading the poem. The description of Nightmare in the poem itself was pretty vague; it said he wore a mask, but nowhere was the mask actually described. The poem said the demon liked gold, but little else about his motivations. My take on the character was that the demon saw Country itself as a kind of treasure where he could play and plunder as he willed. There was a line in Part III that said Nightmare saw the people of the Country as little rats scampering in his trove, suggesting he viewed them as pests, who could either serve him or be eradicated.

  If the history of Europe teaches us anything, it is that land is far more valuable than any amount of material wealth; not only the strategic advantages and resources, but the culture, its sons and daughters, and most importantly its future. Country’s own history was plagued by invaders and conquerors as far back as there was a written record.

  The demon in Arkadius both represented Country’s oppressors and predicted them. Nobody in the thirteenth century AD could have known about Nazism, or concentration camps, or gas chambers, or Josef Stalin and secret police that made people disappear. But the poem’s unknown author hadn’t needed to, because as I learned the longer I spent in Country, bad blood is forever.

  I couldn’t help but think of the Night Country and its Vermin, eternally running and hiding underground from a tyrant who had stolen the sun.

  “Looks cool,” I told Lolek. “But, how are you thinking of designing the mask? And what is he going to hold in his left hand?”

  Lolek swiveled in his seat, looked up at me, and shrugged. “Does this guy visit you a lot?”

  “What?” I said.

  “You seem like you haven’t been sleeping, man. This is his right hand.” Lolek pointed to the blurry patch on the screen.

  Shit.

  Lolek raised an eyebrow at me. “You said left. Anyway, don’t worry. I also don’t sleep very often. Too much tea.” Lolek took a sip from his mug and went back to clicking his mouse, adding and subtracting mask variants he’d already drawn. None of them seemed right, though.

  “About the mask, I was hoping you could tell me. You are the story guy. I haven’t read it since I was in school,” Lolek said.

  I scratched under my beard, thinking. “The mask should represent duality, the temptation he offers King Mirek - happiness, riches, women, power - all of which are supposed to come once the kingdom is united. But of course, the way that ends up happening is through bloodshed. The mask should also show the eternal nature of the demon. Not an infinity sign. That would be lame.”

  “A spiral, maybe?” Lolek said, filling in the blank space with a single, ebony line coiling outward from the center of the mask.

  “Yeah. A spiral...”

  Weird, I thought. Why didn’t
I think of that? Maybe I’m not the right person to be translating this poem. I hope that’s not what Filip wants to talk about… oh, shit.

  I checked the time on my phone. I was supposed to be in Filip’s office three minutes ago. “Hey, sorry pal, but I gotta run. Meeting with the boss-man. Looks great, though,” I said, already rushing for the stairs.

  “One more thing,” Lolek called after me. “What should I put in his hand?”

  I halted, drumming my fingers on the doorframe. “Hmmm. Give him some sort of weapon. In the scene where Arkadius fights Nightmare, Nightmare disarms him. Arkadius only wins because he draws the blessed dagger the water nymph gave him from his boot and stabs the demon in the face. So it needs to be something that can disarm a sword.”

  Lolek saluted me. “Roger. I’ll think of something cool.”

  Roger. He probably thinks Americans actually talk like that.

  THE CITY

  I RAN upstairs to find Filip waiting for me in his office. We sat in the chairs by the window and Sabina brought us coffee. I’d had too much already, but I wasn’t about to say no. My body felt like it had been run over by an eighteen-wheeler. My exhausted, disheveled appearance was the first thing Filip commented on.

  “So, Dan… Are you feeling better? You look quite tired,” my boss said.

  “People keep saying that. I’m all right. But it was a bad week.”

  Filip crossed his legs, folding his fingers over his knee. “I don’t have much time, but I wanted to talk to you about some problems I’m having with the translations.” I must have given him a dirty look, because he immediately added, “You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re not in trouble. I believe there was probably just some miscommunication.”

  He spread a few printouts of my work on the coffee table. There were two columns on each page. In the left column was the original, Countryish text of the poem; in the right was my translation. Someone had gone through and underlined certain words in the original text, and the corresponding places in my version where there were errors. There were a lot of underlines.