Corruption

by Adam Vine

  “What happens if I say no?” I said.

  Queen Rat shrugged and let go of Len’s crotch. I expected her demeanor to become cold, but her smile widened. “You want me to threaten you? You actually want to cause a conflict between us, so you can justify acting on those thoughts of betrayal rooting around in your brain like a hungry hog? Please, Leech. You’re smarter than that.

  “Besides, that’s all rather boring, isn’t it? I realize you’re sad that the little princess is actually the daughter of our worst enemy, and still somehow managed to steal all your precious glory. However, if the reason you’re acting like a rebuffed teenager is because you feel you’re not getting your proper slice of the praise, then I promise this proposition will interest you.”

  “What proposition is that?” I said.

  Queen Rat placed both hands on the glass-bound object in my arms, pushing it lightly into my chest. “I want you to do something for the cause that she never could. We both know what this is.”

  “And what will happen to Zaea?” I said.

  “Unlike you, I believe our little princess when she says she’s one of us. But that doesn’t change what must happen. She’ll be arrested, interrogated, and likely tortured before four torches burn. If that effort proves fruitless, she’ll be allowed to stay and fight,” Queen Rat said.

  “You’re going to torture her?” I said.

  Queen Rat laughed. “This coming from the boy who was about to slash her to ribbons? Don’t worry, it won’t be anything too medieval, just enough to show that she’s really who she says, and that her moral 180 is real. I’m much more interested in the contents of that book than some stupid, ancient prophecy. For what else is a prophecy but the hopes and dreams of a people? I don’t want to give my people hopes and dreams, Leech. I want to give them a future. Now, are you going to read it to me, or not?”

  THE BURROW

  I STOPPED BY the Infirmary to see Squirrel on my way to Queen Rat’s chambers. I asked Bob o’ the Knob if a quick visit would be all right. He gave me a curt grunt, clicking the nub of his tongue as he pointed at the Infirmary door, which I took as a yes.

  I found Vole waiting by Squirrel’s bedside, sucking his thumb amidst a silent sea of sleeping children. Vole quickly straightened up and wiped his thumb on his trousers when he saw me enter. The next bed over, where I’d seen the blight-sick boy on my first day in the Last Station, was now empty.

  “How’s he doing?” I said, keeping my voice low.

  Vole glanced up, exhaustion sagging his usually wide, vigilant eyes. “His best days are behind him, I’m afraid. The doctor said he might not live to see the torches change. It’s only a matter of time. Lost too much blood, and the trauma wasn’t the worst part. Now, there’s an infection. The blade that cut him was poisoned.”

  Squirrel’s arm had been amputated, and the bandages hadn’t done much to stem the bleeding. His brow was glazed with a glistening sheen of sweat. His eyes darted beneath shut eyelids, deep in the throes of a fever dream.

  I didn’t know what to say, other than, “I’m sorry.”

  I offered him my hand. Vole clenched it, cringing back tears. He let go of me and brushed his angled, hawkish nose as if he’d been fighting an itch. “You of all people got nothin’ to apologize for, Leech. Without you and Zaea, we would’ve been dead little Vermin. How was the feast, by the way? Wish I could’ve been there. Would’ve liked to honor her, and you. I would’ve liked that very much. But I can’t leave him.”

  A sob escaped Vole, and a few of the bodies sleeping nearby stirred and moaned. Vole didn’t try to hold back his tears. They came in a steaming deluge that carved canyons from the grime of his cheeks.

  “He’s my best friend, Leech. My only true friend. The only person who ever cared about me. I don’t know what to do. He’s always been there for me, even when others left. He loved me like I was his brother, and never asked me for nothing. I don’t want him to go.”

  I knew that nothing I could say or do would ease Vole’s pain, so I did the next best thing and cradled his head in my arms until he’d cried himself dry. I said a brief, quiet thank you to Squirrel, and left them alone in the silence.

  THE BURROW

  “SOME WINE, before we begin?”

  Queen Rat filled my goblet up to the brim. Shame I’m not going to finish it. It’s probably the best she has. Gotta be hard to grow grapes down here. Still, only one of us is getting blacked out drunk this torch, and it isn’t going to be me.

  The queen lounged in front of the fire, stretching out and yawning as she topped off her own clay goblet. The book sat on the table between us, its stained glass eye staring at me like a splinter out of time.

  “Let’s start from the beginning. Why don’t you confirm for me exactly what this book is, and who wrote it,” Queen Rat said.

  “This book is the private journal of the Crippled King, written before his rise to power, when he was studying as an acolyte of the faith, at a church called St. Aram’s,” I said.

  “The Lost Cathedral. Yes, every child in the Burrow’s heard that story. St. Aram’s was the cathedral that was hidden on the Last Day of Sun, whose greatest treasure is supposed to be the Crippled King’s secrets,” Queen Rat said.

  I already knew from reading the diary that the Crippled King had feared the contents of the Glass Book could undermine his rule, so he buried it deep beneath the Night City. He created a magic barrier that would keep the structure immune from outside elements until the end of time.

  The book contained plans, mathematics, diagrams, and astrophysical concepts that together created a framework for moving an entire planet to a new star system in the case that a civilization grew so old that it outlived its parent star, as this world had.

  After reading the Crippled King’s diary, I now believed that this was the watershed moment that the people of the Burrow referred to as the Last Day of Sun. Only, for some reason the Crippled King’s plan to give his people a new star failed, and their planet had fallen into unending darkness, which the people of the Burrow called the True Night.

  “Tell me where you found it, again?” Queen Rat said.

  “It was in an unlocked cabinet in the prison camp archives. At first, I thought the drawer was unlocked because I’d knocked it over. But thinking back on it, those drawers were pretty much indestructible. We used them to blockade the door against more than a dozen Snowmen. It was unlocked because the Ratkeeper had been reading it.”

  “And why would he, a loyal servant of the Crippled King, have hidden a book in an archives where he could read it in secret, rather than return it to its rightful owner?” Queen Rat said.

  “Because he wasn’t a loyal servant. No one knew the Crippled King’s crimes better than the Ratkeeper. My theory is that the Ratkeeper’s loyalty died a long time ago. He was looking for a way out. The Ratkeeper wanted to be free, maybe so he could finally search for a new beginning, or maybe because he could no longer live with himself after all he’d done, and was looking for a way to finally make it end, like Zaea. But because he was enslaved to the will of his master through that infamous spiral mask, the Ratkeeper didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t free himself. I had to do it for him.”

  “Are you saying that he let you win?” Queen Rat said.

  “I’m saying that it’s possible. When I was drawn into the vision caused by gazing into his lamp, there were certain inconsistencies that make me believe he allowed me to slip out of the hallucination and wake up so I could destroy his bonds before he would be forced to kill me,” I said.

  One of the cover’s stained glass corners bore a spider web of hairline cracks, like it had been dropped inside a bag that protected it from shattering entirely, and there were fine blood splatters along the outer rim of the pages. Someone else had found the book before I did, some other Vermin who hadn’t survived to tell the tale.

  Queen Rat sipped her wine, rolling her fingertips over the uneven, blood-spattered paper. “Which leaves me to ask how what
is perhaps the most precious artifact relating to this rebellion ever discovered moved from Point A to B, if it ever was in St. Aram’s to begin with. I believe it was, and that the Lost Cathedral isn’t merely a myth. But if you’ve got any theories about this particular hole in your story, Leech, now would be the time to indulge me.”

  I took a sip from my own cup. “Simple. Meerkat and Grandfather Mouse found St. Aram’s. That’s the mission of great importance you sent them on, isn’t it? Only they never made it back to the Last Station. The Ratkeeper killed them and took the book for himself. I think he had to know what it said before he could fully turn on his master, before he could truly let one of us win.”

  Queen Rat gazed into her wine. “If your theory is correct, then St. Aram’s was most likely destroyed.”

  “I agree that it’s probable,” I said. “But, who knows?”

  Queen Rat tipped her cup to me. “I must say, Leech. I’m impressed you put all of this together on your own. I told you of Katherine’s, excuse me, Meerkat’s, and Grandfather Mouse’s deaths. I did not tell you that their final mission was to find the Lost Cathedral. Perhaps I should consider promoting you to revolutionary intelligence.”

  “I admit that it was a guess, and you only now just confirmed my suspicion. One thing I’ve learned here is that if you want to get information out of someone, the best way to do it is to confidently pretend you already know it. I learned that from you, actually,” I said.

  “You’re learning to play the game. Pity. It’s always a shame to see a good person corrupted by politics. But I suppose it’s unavoidable. All bright things fade over time,” Queen Rat said.

  “Thanks for your vote of confidence,” I said, clinking her glass. I decided that finishing one more glass wouldn’t hurt my chances of pulling off what I had planned.

  Queen Rat’s gaze drifted toward the ceiling. “Of course, the book could be a counterfeit meant to deliver us false information, to draw us out and misplay our final hand. And make no mistake, we are in the days of final hands being played.”

  “It could be, but I doubt it,” I said. “You didn’t hear the Ratkeeper scream.”

  “Though I sorely wish I had, you’re right. I suppose I’ll just have to trust your judgement on this one,” Queen Rat said.

  “Also, and perhaps more to the point, if I can say anything about the Crippled King after reading his entire life story, it’s that even as an adolescent, he was a perfectionist. Every idea he had, experiment he conducted, and number he crunched is reported here in painstaking detail, including the science behind how he hid and sealed the Church of St. Aram. I don’t think that kind of detail could be faked,” I said.

  “Explain,” Queen Rat said.

  “I don’t completely understand the science myself, but the way he explains it in the book is that he used something called an atemporal lever, which didn’t physically move the cathedral at all, but instead paused its momentum through spacetime, causing its position in our four-dimensional universe to change. The end result is basically what you and I would call teleportation, but it’s still just technology; an extremely advanced form of technology, but technology, nonetheless. And technology is only magical if you don’t know how it works.”

  Queen Rat drummed her fingers. “I can’t say I understood much, or any of what you just said. Fortunately, I know many talented astromancers in Salt Town who will. You’re right that a belief is never more damaging than when it is misplaced. If I put my faith in this book and you’re wrong, then many people will lose their lives. So you’d better hope you’re not wrong. Shall we begin?” Queen Rat said.

  I took the book in my lap and opened it to the first page. “I’ll start from the beginning.”

  THE GLASS BOOK

  I HAVE WALKED with the Prophet. I have shared his rice and salted fish, and have spoken his name. He has made me his disciple, and I truly believe that he will be the one to lead my people out of perdition.

  My old centering scrolls were lost during our escape from the flood back on Home. I had neither paper nor charcoal to write on the ship that carried us across the Sea of the Gods to this world of light and endless water, for our quarters there were cramped and inhumane, like the quarters of servants. Our food consisted of a substance similar to liquefied rice, which we drank twice a day, once upon waking, and then before lights-out. We slept three to a bed, and there was always a long line to use the privy. Sometimes you’d have to wait for hours. Sometimes the privies broke and people continued using them anyway, or made their own privies in the darkest stretches of the ship.

  We were forced to lie on the floor for many days at a time, both at the start and end of our journey, and the result left my legs weak and unsteady. My good hand has since taken a steady tremble, and I have difficulty drawing or aiming a bow. I will say nothing more of our journey here, for I do not wish to remember it.

  (“Well, that’s our first piece of evidence, isn’t it? The Crippled King would be, of all things, a cripple...” Queen Rat said. I continued reading.)

  They call this place Paradise. When we first arrived, it was difficult to see why. We spent months in starched white tents, as crowded and brutal as our accommodations aboard Gadov’s ship. But the people here are friendly, and above all, kind, despite the vast differences between our two tribes. They went to great lengths to understand and respect our customs, morals, and linguistic oddities. Many of our tribe from Home thought them demons, and plotted to kill them.

  It was not until the Prophet confronted the conspirators in front of the whole tent city and put a stop to their murderous nonsense that it was ended. The conspirators were given over to the Yesaedan authorities as a symbol of good faith. I do not believe any were beheaded, exsanguinated, or even executed. Such punishments seem too crass for this world, where the men do not gaze at each other as animals, but as fellows in brotherhood. Even the women here are different. They do not seem to me all that much different from the men.

  (“Leech,” Queen Rat said, “while this is all very interesting, it hardly constitutes evidence. Mind skipping ahead to the point?”

  “I do mind, actually. You’ll see why in a minute,” I said. Queen Rat rolled her eyes. I read on.)

  This Yesaeda is a world of ancient, indescribable magic, of islands full of flashing lights and towers as tall as the sky. We glimpsed the blue curve of the planet briefly from above, as Gadov’s ship was making its descent. It is a water world. By day, the sea is a shade of blue so deep it could never be imagined. There are uncountable archipelagos of city-islands. Some cities even float above the water like the garden towers of Ito, but a thousand times larger. Some swim deep beneath the surface like gargantuan whales made of luminous glass. By night, this world is a mirror of the Spiral, a scattered, star-studded multitude of lights.

  (“Pretty,” Queen Rat mused. “All right. I’m listening.”)

  When we were finally released from the refugee camp (kindly named Welcome City), I visited the shore and bathed my toes in the sea. The burning, black sand was as fine as powdered obsidian. I expected the ocean to be freezing, like the fast-flowing waters of the river Ist back on Home, but it was as warm as taking a bath. It didn’t take long for me to change my opinion that this truly was paradise.

  The people here are kinder, too. I hate to say it of my own tribe, but the fact of our closed-mindedness and hostility to other tribes has become so apparent this past year, it is impossible to ignore. We are only of one color. Back home, any person of a different shade was known not to be trusted, until the Prophet, and even he required many miraculous deeds to convince our people to follow him.

  The Yesaedans are of many colors, as many shades as the birds of the jungle, and yet it doesn’t affect their relations. They are also a polyglot people fluent in many languages, including our own river country dialect of the Yubiq, which they call “Low Ithic,” and which everyone here speaks. Where a canyon of tongues would prove an impassable barrier back Home if no translator could b
e found to bridge it, here, it is not a problem. The Yesaedans either already know the language in question, or carry a magic device in their pockets that does.

  Never was the abstraction of human ideas made clearer than when I arrived here and witnessed people not solving their quarrels or addressing insults with the blade, but with words. When our own quarrels erupted into violence in the camp, the offenders were quarantined and reprimanded, but they were never treated as brutally as prisoners were back on Home.

  An amazing thing seems to happen when people stop being told they are bad and instead are assumed to be good. They start to believe it.

  Standing there with my toes in the warm Yesaedan sea was the first time in my life that I truly wondered if the traditions I had been raised with might be wrong. The Yesaedans had every reason to hate us:

  …We had come to their world uninvited, demanding they take us in, even as we threatened to detonate the ship that had transported us here, an explosion which would have killed billions of their people. Yet they did not kill us or even treat us as enemies. They built refugee camps for us to stay in and offered us free schooling while they figured out how to best integrate us into their society.

  …When we violated their laws, they gave us fair trials, and treated us no worse than they would their own citizens. And when we were finally released and allowed to join their civilization, they treated us as brothers and sisters, rather than an invading horde, which is the way we would’ve treated them had the sandals been switched.

  …Even the Prophet was given a position of power. His Holiness was given the keys to Neen, the City Arcanum, and named our Sovereign-In-Exile until such time that we are able to go back Home, or we find a new one. The Twelve Houses unanimously supported him. The Prophet’s teachings have spread far and wide, penetrating every facet of Yesaedan society. The Yesaedans now consider him one of their own great thinkers, an acceptable guru of the ten thousand-year Yesaedan canon.