A Latent Dark

by Martin Kee

  Lyle crushed a thumb onto the blank area on the map where Lassimir would be. “And now the same thing is sitting between your two fine city-states like a kidney stone. Sometimes they pass. Painfully. This one has been particularly burdensome. And yet you folks have done nothing.”

  “Wait,” John said. “Are you suggesting that Lassimir—”

  “I am suggesting, Father, that Lassimir and that witch house may as well be the same thing.”

  John laughed. “Reverend, I’m sorry, but Lassimir is just a collection of outcasts and vagrants whose probation ran out. It’s a settlement of outlaws, at worst, but to suggest that… well you are practically calling it the cradle of Satan himself. I’m sorry, but I just think you are making a bit of a leap.”

  The look on Lyle’s face squelched John’s laughter instantly.

  “Besides,” John said. “The police have raided Lassimir more than once. It isn’t like we aren’t capable.”

  “Your military hasn’t performed a raid in over a decade,” Lyle said. “I’ve seen the records. They said it was too costly, yes I know. I’ve been told about The Flux, as some of you call it.”

  “So see?” John said. “People have been there, you know. It isn’t like the place is crawling with—”

  “Whores? Sinners? Sodomites?” Lyle sneered. “Go ahead, John, say it: Lyle Summers came out here from his poor, podunk towns in the south and is worried about a city of homeless people, because he tends to adhere to the teachings a little more strictly than you do.”

  “Lyle,” John said. “That’s besides the point. They haven’t hurt anyone. We’ve sent missionaries and they simply turn them away. They haven’t attacked us, in fact they pretty much leave the surrounding cities alone.”

  “The same way a tick leaves a dog alone, eh?” Lyle crossed his legs. “Sure you get one or two, just inside the ear. You can’t see ‘em, and the dog doesn’t complain. The flap of skin hides them away. Out of sight out of mind. But they invite their friends. One day you look under the ear and there’s a few more, then before you know it, the dog begins to look sick. You pull up the ear and now it’s covered in ticks. There’s so many you can’t even tell what’s dog and what’s parasite. All you can do then is put a bullet in the poor dog’s head.” He leaned in toward John, who did his best not to recoil. Lyle continued, his eyes blazing cold fire.

  “They carry disease, parasites and yet, the host sometimes never even knows it’s infected. This city has been sick for a long time, Father. Your citizens are just too fatigued and drained to know what’s eating them alive.”

  “I told you,” John said. “Raids have been tried. You might be able to get a few dozen men through, but in the end, they’ll just disappear into the forest. In a year they’ll be right back at it again. You’ll just have meaningless deaths. It won’t solve anything.”

  “Meaningless?” Lyle’s face was a sudden mask of disgust. “Meaningless… you’d call Christ’s sacrifice meaningless? You’d call the Crusades meaningless? I’d like you to go down to the barracks and talk to one of the soldiers”—he was standing out of his chair—“Go on. Talk to one of those soldiers who fought for Jesus and The Church—The Church that you supposedly serve—in the Maka-Sichu Crusades. Talk to the families who prayed for the safety of men who never came home. You go tell them that it was meaningless! You tell them”—he slapped a palm on the top of the desk. John jumped— “that their fathers and brothers and sons all died a meaningless death!”

  John had gone pale. He stared slack-jawed at the man in white standing over him, sweating. A vein stood out on Lyle’s forehead. For a moment, John could see the man on a stage, selling miracle cures and dandelion water.

  Lyle pulled a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and dabbed at his forehead. The room seemed to echo long after Summers had stopped yelling. The door was looking like a very good idea to John.

  “Now,” said Lyle. He was breathing heavily but no longer yelling. “I don’t know what your people have been thinking they would accomplish by letting an infection rot away at your cities, but the Vatican and I feel it has gone on long enough.”

  “So what about the girl then,” John asked. “Skyla.”

  John regretted the question. His tiny inside voice was pleading with him to leave. Just leave the hotel and never look back for fear of turning into the taffy-faced woman in the painting. But he had to know. He had to know why everything seemed to center around Skyla.

  “What about her?” Lyle said indifferently. “She’ll be caught and dealt with.”

  “Define ‘dealt with,’” John said.

  Lyle walked over to an end table and poured himself a glass of water. He drank it in huge gulps and held the glass out, admiring it. “If she can be saved, so be it. That’s up to the Lord,” Lyle said as if speaking to the glass, then set it back onto the table.

  “What if she can’t?” John asked. “Hypothetically, of course.”

  Lyle’s face changed, becoming congenial, his voice becoming softer, more pleasant. “Well,” he said, “I suppose that’s up to the Lord as well. But either way, I think there’s a lot we can still learn from her. If we can find her in time, there is a facility in Rhinewall that might be able to help.”

  “I don’t understand,” John said. “A facility that will save her soul?”

  “You could say that,” Lyle said. “Or at the very least, make it so she can’t harm anyone again.”

  John changed positions in his seat. “You mean surgery.”

  Lyle only shrugged. It was a mundane gesture compared to all the fire and brimstone John had witnessed only moments ago.

  “Not sure what you’d call it,” Lyle said, looking at the end table as if it were somehow fascinating. “A procedure… a confessional. But it could have helped her mother if they’d done it soon enough.”

  “Done what soon enough?” John said, poised on the end of his seat.

  “Not sure,” Lyle said, almost sighing. “But it’s amazing technology. It’s God and science together, John. You really should visit the people there sometime.”

  “So you knew her mother?” John said, staring at the entranced man.

  Lyle nodded. “Her and her sister,” he said. “They were good girls, well Lynn was, anyway… Rhia”—he chuckled—“a real pistol that one.”

  John only stared. He found he had to make a conscious effort to make the words come out of his mouth. “How… How did…”

  “How did they get all the way out here?” Lyle said. “Oh, it’s as easy as a train ride, Father. Of course, I wouldn’t expect someone who has lived their whole life in a city to understand that. The fact is that they are here now. But don’t think for a minute that I didn’t try and save those girls, Father.”

  “Save them or burn them?” John heard his own voice and his stomach dropped.

  Oh that was the wrong thing to say. This is why you never moved up,John. He heard Christopher’s voice in his head now. Just can’t keep your ever-loving mouth shut.

  Lyle spun to face him, hatred in his eyes. “We tried,” he spat. “We tried everything. For years we tried. You want to know why they burn people like them, Father?”—he was stepping toward John, who scrambled toward the door—“Because there’s nothing you can do. They are broken, doomed souls. The only thing you can do for them is to burn them and hope the flames of salvation can cauterize the wound in the world before it spreads.”

  John stumbled to the door. He pawed at the handle with sweaty, slippery hands. The faces on the wall all seemed to follow him with their eyes—those that had eyes. Lyle was taking pained, hunched steps toward him, murder on his face.

  “And Father, don’t think for a moment that I won’t roll right over you to do what needs doing.”

  The handle finally gave and John yanked it open, sliding around the door as it swung. Lyle grabbed the edge of the door with a whitened palm and clutched the doorframe with his other hand. He loomed over John, their faces inches apart. Lyle bared skeletal
teeth at him.

  “You go run to your archbishop and try to convince him that this isn’t worth doing,” he said. “You tell him how your passivity in the face of sin was worth it when your city rots into the ground. Then you remember who’s trying to save it.”

  “You’re insane.” John felt comfortable saying it only because he had a good feeling that he could outrun the man at this point.

  Lyle’s face softened at that comment. “I think you mistake passion for insanity. It’s been a long running flaw in your branch of The Church. A little more passion from your team would have saved a lot of lives.”

  With that, the Reverend Lyle Summer slammed the door. John stood in the empty hallway. He turned his head left, then right. Did nobody else hear that? Or has Lyle simply bought every room on the floor? It wouldn’t have surprised him.

  Finding his feet again, John walked on shaky legs down the stairs and out from the hotel. A large truck lumbered by, its four steam engines pumping like a runaway locomotive. Off in the distance factories billowed smoke, militia trained in straight lines, marching in perfect unison. Bollingbrook was on its way to recovery.

  Chapter 15

  It was a brisk night with the smell of rain drifting in from the west, through the tall tents, teasing the windmills and stretching its ghostly fingers through windows and watch posts. Dale shivered, but not entirely from the cold.

  Flynn, the knife vendor had been hesitant to loan him the money at first. Dale had given his best sales pitch regarding the fight. If it was a win, he’d be able to turn over ten times the amount bet (and shave a bit off the top for himself). Flynn handed over the money reluctantly, his bodyguard holding Dale in a cold glare.

  But that was alright. He had a good feeling and an insider tip about the upcoming fight. It was almost a done deal—until he passed the sound of thrown dice. What had been a quick detour ended up with Dale losing half of his money. Even if the fight went in his favor, he was going to come up short. Dale thought of the bodyguard’s calloused, thick fists and shuddered again.

  A scream shook him from his thoughts. Pots fell into the street clattering. A vendor yelled and then she appeared. Her golden hair whipped her delicate neck as she looked behind at her pursuers.

  Dale made an unconscious move, his hand hovering over the knife at his waist as his eyes narrowed. Several larger men began to take notice of the young woman rushing through the market.

  She turned to him, her deep blue eyes locking on to his own. With a sudden collapsing leap, the girl threw herself into his arms.

  “Please!” she said, clutching his collar, her face a little too desperate in Dale’s opinion. It had to be some kind of joke, he thought, but certainly an interesting one.

  He brushed the thought away as the men appeared. He had seen them before Bailey and Roland, a couple of kids he’d noticed growing up along the docks. They were men now, too old for the urchin gangs and too young to be trusted with honest work. They stumbled around the corner, the angry merchant yelling at them from a gap-toothed mouth.

  “Get behind me,” Dale said, surprised at the calm in his own voice.

  Bailey grinned. “Aye, if it ain’t ole Dale. Ya managed ta stagger all the way from the tavern, or ya have Mad Marley carry ya?”

  “Piss off,” Dale said, just loud enough for them to hear. That’s the best you can do? Piss off? Say something heroic you idiot. “I fight my own fights, kid. I’m twice your age and ten times your skill.”

  He brandished the dagger at his side. The blade glinted a dull silver in the amber torchlight, the hilt coming loose at the bottom with a torn thread exposed. A butter knife would have been as threatening.

  Bailey stepped forward, his dark mustache split open with a nasty scar. He pulled a long saber from its sheath and gave it a quick flourish.

  “Where’d you steal that one from?” said Dale, doing his best not to show his bewilderment by the size of the weapon.

  “Nice, eh,” said the man in a growl. “Pity it’ll have coward’s blood on it.”

  “Chasing a lone woman through the streets, I think the only coward’s blood on that sword is going to be yours. You should have stayed at the docks.”

  He barely noticed that the entire street had gone silent as the crowd began to back away from the exposed blades. Merchants’ shutters rolled down around him as people stepped out of harm’s way. He looked back at Bailey, the man’s saber wavering slightly.

  He lunged at Dale with a trembling hand, the blade easily dodged. Dale knocked it aside with a quick parry. Bailey snarled as he backed away, the blade coming up and gleaming in the torchlight. He lurched forward again, his sword more confident now as he aimed for Dale’s throat, only to see the flash of metal and feel the weapon fall from his grip.

  “Want to try that again?” said Dale with a grin. “Or are you ready to leave bad enough alone?”

  He could feel the young woman’s breath on his back as she clutched his shirt. It felt wonderful.

  Bailey scooped the weapon up and backed away. He drew a nervous glance from Roland, who seemed to have lost any taste for a fight at this point. The men took two more steps backward and sheathed their swords. Dale watched the man’s eyes, darting between him and the girl. They seemed to linger on her longer than what he would consider normal.

  Please, he thought. You boys aren’t even trying.

  They turned and left without a word as Dale sheathed his dagger amid the clatter of opening shops and gossip. A few people cheered, others simply went about their business.

  He turned to face the girl. “They shouldn’t bother you—”

  She kissed him passionately, drawing hoots and cheers from several members of the crowd. An anonymous hand slapped him on the back. All at once, Dale was in love, even though he knew it was all bullshit, it was fun. He tried to ignore the nagging voice in the back of his mind.

  No girl goes running through crowded streets like that, running in plain sight from two men, nobody helping her. If it is a setup, I’m not sure I see the point.

  But as she pressed her body against his, amid the cheers and laughter, Dale forgot everything he had been thinking.

  Screw it, he thought. She can have whatever she wants.

  And she did.

  *

  Dale laughed and reclined back in his bunk, his deformed arm twisting at a strange angle behind his head. He had paid women for sex before—it wasn’t hard to come by in a place like Lassimir. But to have a woman seduce him, well that was just charity.

  His eyes traced the curve of her hip as she stood up and got dressed. She turned her head slightly and he caught the faint outline of a smile on her face in the warm lamplight.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve been far too kind.”

  “Now I know you’re setting me up,” Dale said, reaching a hand out to touch that perfect skin.

  She pulled the yellow dress up to her waist, leaving her small breasts exposed in the yellow light. She sat back on the bed and kissed him. She smelled of flowers.

  “No really,” she said caressing his stubbly chin. “I honestly don’t know where I would have gone if you hadn’t scared off those men.”

  “I was a tower sentry, once. You learn some basic combat, the kind of training those brats wouldn’t get.”

  “Well,” she said, settling into his embrace, her golden hair slipping over his chest. “That certainly explains how you can handle a blade so well.”

  “Among other things.”

  “Lech.” She laughed, nudging him in the ribs. “You make a great hero. All you need is a white cuirass.”

  “And custom gauntlets,” he said, wriggling his twisted fingers.

  She grabbed his crippled hand and kissed it. He closed his eyes, drinking in the warmth and attention his body had all but forgotten over the years. He squeezed her hand. Dale knew a scam when he saw it, and he was clearly seeing one now, in the most beautiful face he had ever seen. The flicker of lamplight danced in her dark eyes.
>
  Oh yeah, he thought. Way too good to be true.

  That didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to make the most of it. It wasn’t like those bandits were waiting for him outside the tent. What the hell would they even steal? He was penniless, ugly, and crippled.

  It was almost adorable just how staged the entire thing was.

  Now they lay together in the bunk that she had paid for with her own money.

  What sort of girl arrives in Lassimir of all places, looking beautiful and loaded with coin?

  He shoved the thought aside just as he had ignored every other question that sprouted like dandelions in the back of his brain. He wasn’t exactly in a thinking mood.

  “How does a girl like you get by the lookouts,” he said, stroking her hair.

  “I was scared,” she said in a small voice. “They listened to my plea. It wasn’t hard. And it wasn’t like I pose any sort of threat. You think I bribed them?”

  “No,” he said, shushing her. “No, not at all. It’s just that you do stand out.”

  She clung to him as he inhaled the sweetness of her hair.

  “Maybe that’s why I found you,” she said. “We both stand out.”

  He went still. “Yeah, I do make an impression,” said Dale, waving the broken limb.

  “Oh.” she said. “No. No not like that. You stand out… I mean… I just knew there was something about you. You seemed like the only person in this city I could trust. And I was terrified.”

  He relaxed a little. The world became still and soft for an endless, perfect moment.

  She’s half my age, he thought. Christ, maybe I am a lech.

  “Well, I suppose I do have a certain stoic quality,” he joked, admiring his other hand casually.

  “You do.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. Honey, you don’t know me from the idiots you paid to chase you.

  “You said you used to be a sentry?” she asked. “It shows. That must have been scary.”