Corruption

by Adam Vine

  “Either way, Yesaeda unraveled over the course of a few, short generations. People got scared. They stopped having children and starting families. By the time Jun and the refugees from Home arrived, Yesaeda was hanging on by a thread. What Jun saw as utopia was actually a period of steep decline. By then, the Yesaedans had accepted, at the cultural if not the individual level, that they had no future as a people. What he saw as love and human fraternity was a threadbare act, a front people used to keep them from devolving into violence and chaos. But that, too, didn’t last.

  “A black market slave trade had arisen centering around children from the seed-worlds, who the rich Yesaedans needed to replace the children they weren’t having and the Blight was taking. As things got worse, the Yesaedan military even started false flag wars on those planets, so it would be easier for the slavers to get in and do the kidnapping.”

  “My ancestors… (*hic*)… did this?” Queen Rat said.

  “Yes. And it gets worse.”

  She finished her wine. The bottle was empty again. I got up to get her another one.

  “People on my world have done equally bad things,” I said. “But there were always good people who tried to fight back and stop those bad things from happening, just like there were good people here. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out so well for Yesaeda. The cities were torn apart by civil war, not just over the lives of the millions of kidnapped children, but for the soul of Yesaeda itself.”

  “Dan (*hic*)…” Queen Rat said, covering her wine-stained teeth with the back of a hand. “I’m getting tired. I want to go to bed… (*hic*)… with you. All of this is… well, but what’s the really big piece of cheese?”

  Damn, she’s drunker than I thought. So am I, but still. Mission almost accomplished.

  The way the queen was staring made me uncomfortable, until I remembered what I was doing. If I faltered for one second, even for a meaningless, drunken screw with a powerful older woman, I would stray from my path and lose my only chance to get what I’d came here for.

  Besides, she doesn’t want to screw me. She wants Len. It’s him she sees when she looks at me. She probably wanted him long before he died. Maybe they were screwing. I mean, the guy was ugly, but he’s built like a fire truck, and from what people say about him, he was a good fighter, and highly intelligent.

  She doesn't really want me, just like Kashka doesn't really love me, she loves the idea of me. Everywhere I go, I'm someone I'm not.

  That made it easier to defuse the queen’s proposition. Smiling, I said, “We’ll go to bed soon, all right? But I need you to hear this next part. It changes everything.”

  Queen Rat rolled her eyes and waved me on. “On with it… (*hic*).”

  Finding my place on the page again, I read.

  THE GLASS BOOK

  The churches are full. Every day, more people come to join our movement. But they come not for me, the nameless brother in my midnight purple robes. They come for the Prophet, to see him, to touch him, to hear his voice.

  In these past five years of bloodshed and hatred, he has become a symbol of hope to them. The fighting and death yield no sign of ending. Yet the Prophet’s followers, those who have given the Promise of Peace, number greater than ever – into the hundreds of thousands at least, even the millions according to some.

  Many have taken to sleeping in the main hall of the church. I am glad the renovations to the cathedral were completed before things got bad. We wake to the shaking of seismic bombs raining dust all over us. The display of Gadov’s old ship, which we moved here piece by piece from the Museum of Culture so it wouldn’t be destroyed by the extremists, gives me some hope we won’t be crushed to death in our sleep by falling stone and wood. The Old Powers of this world fear the Prophet. He has become the symbol of their decline.

  It is not difficult to see why. His message has caught the hearts of the Yesaedan people like wildfire. It is strange to think that my friend and mentor, Aram Gezel, who I met on the highroad crossing the Izo Pass getting drunk on rice wine and smoking his fish while I was on the run from my father’s retainers, has come to mean so much to so many.

  (“Stop… (*hic*) there. Did you say Aram Gezel?” Queen Rat said.

  “Yes, why?” I said.

  “Aram Gezel is one of the names attributed to the Wanderer… (*hic*),” the queen said.

  “You think Jun’s Prophet was the actual, historical Wanderer?” I said.

  Queen Rat’s lips slid back and forth over her teeth as she thought. “Perhaps. Whether it’s an historical document, or a… (*hic*) or a fabrication - my gut tells me this book is somewhere in between - it’s impossible to ignore the thought. Besides, who better to emulate a religious fanatic than his own, favored disciple? (*hic*)”

  “I think so, too,” I said.

  “Does it say how he died, this Prophet?” Queen Rat said.

  “Unfortunately, it doesn’t, only that he died sometime during the war. The closest thing to a description I could find was here.” I turned to the page about the Prophet’s funeral.)

  I buried him in secret, in the dirt under the altar where he used to lead his people in prayer. It was his favorite place. I will erect a statue of him, and his body will be preserved in solarite until the end of time. I hope he will be given a proper burial someday, one with all the glory and honor he deserves. But I cannot risk his enemies finding him. They would profane his body, as they have already profaned this place a dozen times, simply for now bearing his name.

  Aram Gezel, better known here on Yesaeda as the Prophet of the Thousand Faces, was the best man I ever knew, far greater than any legend could tell. He wasn’t always a good man. When we first met he was a drunk, a thief, a liar, and a whoremonger. He was a man of violence, a killer. But he died with all the dark sickness of the universe on his shoulders; forsaking treatments that might’ve saved him. He liberated a thousand worlds, saved the lives of a thousand times as many children, because he believed he was a bad man who owed his life to the world.

  That was his final lesson to me: that virtue isn’t something good people do to continue being good. Virtue is what bad people do when they decide to change. A bad man can become good. That was the lesson that Aram taught me.

  (Queen Rat scoffed).

  THE BURROW

  “WHAT A LOAD of… pedantic… philosophical… pig shit... (*hic*),” Queen Rat said. She slumped deeper in her chair, head lolling over and bare feet kicked up on the table, her toes dancing to an unheard tune.

  She was almost where I wanted her. Almost, but not one hundred percent. “Reading between the lines, the implication here is that the Prophet contracted the Blight, but chose to continue his activism to end the child slave trade rather than receive treatment, a choice which ended up killing him. Of course, that wouldn’t make any sense if the disease was genetic,” I said.

  “Could’ve activated… late…” Queen Rat said. “Or perhaps he lived with it all his life… and found some way… to suppress it… (*hic*).”

  “It gets even more interesting,” I said, eliciting the yawn from the queen’s mouth I’d been hoping for. “Almost as soon as the Prophet was dead and buried, the war ended, the peace treaties were signed, and the diurnal cycles on Yesaeda started to change. The days and nights became chaotic and unpredictable.

  “The official opinion of the Yesaedan scientists was that the gates had been tampered with during the war. Remember that at the peak of the fighting, the bloodshed hadn’t just consumed Yesaeda, but over a thousand of its seed-worlds. Jun the Acolyte, however, thought that the breakdown of the gate ring wasn’t due to sabotage, but disrepair. He did the math, and according to him, the gates were simply getting old. But by then, society was in such disarray that fixing them would’ve been impossible.”

  Queen Rat’s eyes narrowed. “And so we arrived at our metaphorical Last Day of Sun.”

  “Right,” I said. “Jun’s theory, laid out in literally dozens of pages of equations throughout the latter
part of this book, was that the only way to save Yesaeda was to give it a new sun. He calculated the best way to eject the planet from the gate ring cycle so that it would immediately fall into the orbit of a new, viable star. But without the original engineering plans the scientists had used to build the gates thousands of years before, it couldn’t be done, not even by a mathematical genius like Jun.”

  “A new sun,” Queen Rat echoed, sighing forlornly at the ceiling. “Sweet, fabled sunlight falling on our faces once more. Wouldn’t that be just grand? But, pardon me if I… (*hic*) if I have a hard time believing that was the Crippled King’s end game. Sorry, Leech. But I’m no longer convinced. You’ve unconvinced me.”

  Dammit, that is not how this was supposed to go.

  I shoved the book in her face, causing her to shy away and bat at me with a goblet-filled fist until I relented. “Read it for yourself. It’s all here,” I insisted. “And it wasn’t just his goal. He became so obsessed with the idea that he built an entire cult around it, mostly made up of the Prophet’s old followers, who had become radicalized after the death of their leader. And guess what it was called?

  “Jun’s followers called themselves the Cult of the Wanderer. Jun the Acolyte became Jun the Disciple. He even convinced the Shadashim to swear allegiance to him, promising to support them in their own fight for liberation once the war for Yesaeda’s soul was over.

  “Together, Jun’s cult and the Shadashim staged a coup against the shattered remnants of the Yesaedan government, overthrowing the powers-that-were in a single night. Jun the Disciple became Jun the Messiah. The people flocked to him, and his rule was solidified. For a while, at least, the political situation on Yesaeda stabilized.

  “Jun’s new government set into motion a vast, worldwide resettlement plan to help prepare the people for the coming cold and darkness as the planet traveled from the last gate to its new parent star, a period that was meant to only last two years in the best case, but even that relatively short time had the potential to cause mass death and chaos.

  “King Jun built his Amber City as a life capsule for Yesaeda’s elites in case the worst came to pass, and his plan failed. Refugees flooded into the cities, where they were promised food and warmth. The days grew dark, and the people waited, but Yesaeda never reached its new sun. Something, somewhere along the way went very, very wrong, and I think we both know the rest of the story,” I finished.

  “Is this your great secret, that the Crippled King stole the sun so that he could one day give it back to us? Well… (*hic*), let me let you in on a secret, Leech. He didn’t. So, fuck... him. (*hic*)”

  “Agreed,” I said, raising my glass. I was worried that if I argued with Queen Rat in any capacity, it would wake her up, and my plan would be toast.

  The queen slumped back in her chair, letting her anger out with a slow hiss. Even calm, she was so drunk I had trouble understanding her. “This is clearly the portrait of the man that you want me to see… (*hic*). So. Go on. Close the book. Make your conclusion. We have other… (*hic*) business… to attend tonight.”

  I feigned a humble bow. “I have no ulterior motives, your highness. To me, it makes perfect sense. The most genocidal, evil dictators in the history of my own world have all believed they were doing what was right for their people, even when their ideas resulted in millions of deaths. They all had savior complexes that led them to believe that the evil they did wasn’t evil at all, only a necessary cost to achieve their plans for the greater good. Maybe Jun truly believed his plan would succeed and give Yesaeda a new star. For some reason, it didn’t, and a hundred years later, here we are.”

  “Oh, go rot with your lousy… (*hic*)… moralizing,” Queen Rat said.

  “That’s not only my opinion, queen. It was his, too. He says so right here…”

  The soft, rhythmic wheeze of Queen Rat’s snore drew my eyes up from the page. Her wine glass rolled out of limp fingers. I caught it before it fell off the table. Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t wake. I would never get this chance again.

  I picked up the book and slid it under the fold of my jacket.

  THE BURROW

  MY SKIN was hot and sticky with sweat as the Glass Book slid under it. I hadn’t taken my jacket off while I was sitting in front of the queen’s fire. She’d been too drunk to notice. I shuffled my feet toward the door to quiet my footsteps, opening it with the knob already turned, so it wouldn’t click.

  I stepped outside to see Bob o’ the Knob standing there with his hand on the pommel of his sword, accompanied by four dangerous-looking men in black, who wore black furs and had black camouflage on their faces. Light gleamed on the naked, twisted steel in their hands.

  The Moles. They know.

  I smiled and faked a careening, drunken lurch toward the silent doorman with my arms outstretched. “Bobbbbby! Hey, buddy! My Moles! What’s goin’ on?”

  Bob ducked my hug, put his palm on my chest and pushed me away. He surveyed my clothes, probably searching them for blood, then gave me a disgusted grimace.

  I pretended not to understand. “What’s the matter? Queen’s passed out. You guys wanna go grab a drink? I’m wasted, man.”

  Bob o’ the Knob clicked his tongue and drew an invisible line with his thumb in the air, signaling the Moles would cut me gullet to groin if I tried to run.

  “You’re not going anywhere, yet. You’re going to wait right here until we can make sure the queen is asleep, safe and sound in her bed. Then, you’re coming with us,” the leader of the Moles said.

  “Knew it was a bad call to leave her alone with this demon,” another muttered.

  The first Mole straightened up, tucking his dagger back into his belt. “The queen does what the queen does. He’s not going to try anything. Look how hard he’s shaking. You three, tie him up. Mr. Knob, mind letting me in there? Her Majesty’s door locks automatically. I need the key to open it from the outside.”

  But I wasn’t shaking because I was scared. I was drunker than I’d planned, and my nerves were shot, making it hard to concentrate on the sensation of falling upward toward the pull of the spiral growing inches in front of my forehead.

  One of the Moles hissed, “Watch out!”

  Another, “His eye!”

  “Shit!” Another said, drawing his knife. But it was too late. I blotted into him like I had taken Vole several hours earlier. In an instant I was the one holding the knife. I stopped the blade mid-thrust. The tip slashed open Len’s chest, leaving a deep cut in his left pectoral, but it missed his heart. Len fell backward, eyes still open, but lifeless. The only light behind them was the fading, burned-in trace of a golden spiral.

  I drove the knife hard into my own belly and blotted again.

  The harsh clamor of confusion descended on the other three Moles and Bob. I watched the Mole I’d killed double over and die twitching, then slashed my own throat and blotted a third and a fourth time. I made the next two Moles stab each other in the neck, falling dominos of black and spurting red.

  I was back in control of Len before he even hit the floor.

  Without a word, Bob o’ the Knob kneeled, closed his eyes, and lowered his head. His hand dropped from the pommel of his sword. He hadn’t drawn it. The blade was still bedded in the scabbard on his belt. Bob wanted me to kill him. He knew he couldn’t beat me in a fight now that my ability to control the Blot had awakened, and wanted me to give him a good death.

  But I had other plans. I bashed the old man’s skull against the brick archway of Queen Rat’s door. The blow was hard enough to knock him unconscious, but not enough to kill him. The thick fur of his bear pelt hood likely spared him from any permanent damage.

  I hadn’t wanted to kill the Moles. I’d only done so because it was their lives or a prison cell and a quick, likely inevitable execution. It’s easy to say in hindsight that there could have been another way, but in that moment, I did what I believed was necessary to survive and finish my plans.

  I hid the bodies the best
I could, in a natural alcove in the cave walls down the hall from the queen’s chamber.

  Then I ran.

  I stumbled and lurched through the endless, dim passages of the Last Station, clutching the Glass Book under my jacket with one hand and the biting wound in my chest with the other. The cut was deep, and my clothes were already soaked with dripping eyes of blood. Thankfully, the place was mostly still empty. Those who weren’t already passed out were still partying hard in the feast hall on the other side of the station. My blood would leave a trail that I didn’t have time to cover, but I hoped I’d be gone long before anyone found it.

  A thousand questions burned in my mind. Were the Blight and the Blot related? If catching the Blot from Kashka had been what brought me to this world, then was she here, too? Was Ink? Would I find them where I was going?

  I knew the reason why the Crippled King’s plan hadn’t succeeded, and why Yesaeda never reached its second sun. I never said it to Queen Rat, but the answer was as clear as day. At some point the Crippled King had made a choice. He chose the darkness, the cold, and the absolute power those things gave him. And I had no doubt about when he’d had this change of heart. It was when he learned to control the Blot.

  That realization led me to another: why I was able to control it now, as well. Something had changed inside me when I’d defeated the Ratkeeper. Some of his power had transferred into me when I’d cut off his mask, or awoken a dormant ability that was already there. My control of the Blot was messy, unrefined, like a white belt in kendo sparring for the first time against a live opponent after only passively drilling technique. But with enough time and training, I knew I could master it.

  One thought still lingered like a thorn in my mind. But what will happen to Zaea?

  My hand instinctively moved to clutch the arrowhead necklace under my shirt. The necklace was somewhere else, in another world and time, but suddenly that place no longer seemed so far away. I could be there and back in the blink of an eye. All I had to do was fall.