A Latent Dark (7 page)

How long has she had this under her bed
? she wondered.

Two smoky green glass disks encased in rings of brass stared up at her from the middle of the open box. They sat half-buried in a nest of ripped white tissue, each ring with a fine set of grooves around its circumference, resembling the lenses of an old camera. Tiny symbols were etched at even intervals around the polished brass rings. The lenses were mounted on a brown, soft leather skullcap via a complex brass hinge. From the skullcap dangled a chinstrap lined with soft wool.

Skyla held the aviator goggles out in front of her as something fell from inside them. It landed in the box with a dull thump. Not wanting to get them dirty, Skyla placed the cap on her head; the lenses rotated upward. They shaded her eyes like a visor and she thought that if it rained again, they might prove valuable for keeping her face dry at least.

She sank her hand back into the packaging and felt something hard, cold, and circular. As she grabbed it, Skyla felt a tingle travel up her forearm, a faint electrical jolt. It lasted for only a moment.

I‘m so tired my mind is playing tricks on me
, she thought.

It was a coin, large enough to cover her palm. A curious square hole cored out its center and the face reminded her of dirty moss. It might have been bronze at one point, but now it was covered in a thick patina of decay. She flipped it over and noted the design of a snake winding its way around the circumference of one side. Its skin was detailed and vivid even under the apparent corrosion. Its back arched and flexed its way around the coin until it met its own tail, which it appeared to eat.

Flipping it over revealed a series of characters she had never seen before. They too spanned the circumference of the coin and ended exactly where they started. There was no way to tell where they ended or began. It seemed to be just one continuous circle of inexplicable text.

She pocketed the coin and crushed the box flat, then placed it at the bottom of the pack, along with the twine, on top of its lid. Orrin watched all this with patient curiosity, occasionally preening a feather or sharpening his beak on the concrete.

The skullcap felt warm and comfortable. She found the chinstrap and adjusted it to fit snugly on her head. Wearing the goggles and looking out from the huge pipeline, Skyla felt like the world’s youngest aeronaut at the helm of some enormous airship. She imagined herself in one of those aerolores they made in the factories behind her house, or maybe even one of the gigantic airships she had seen only in books. She dangled her legs over the ledge, smiling.

Caught in a moment of playfulness, she pulled the brass fittings down over her eyes where they seemed to latch on their own with a muted
click
. All at once the world went dark.

But not Orrin. He was as white as a star. He winked at her.

She held her hand out, in front of her face and noticed a few strange things. For one, her hand appeared highlighted, only a shade dimmer than Orrin. A personal spotlight seemed to illuminate her skin. But everything else was almost imperceptibly dark.

Waving her hand produced, to her astonishment, brilliant trails. She adjusted the lens and noticed a needle in her periphery. It wiggled and ducked depending on where her hand was placed in her field of vision. Next, Skyla grabbed one of the knobs around the lens and twisted.

There was a click, and then her world vanished.

Her vision was consumed in a swirling kaleidoscope of images bleeding into one another. The gorge was there and not there. It was a meadow. It was a grey waste. It was a pavilion of pillared ruins. It was the center of a volcano. It was a desert, a taiga, a grassy plain.

The sewage pipe she sat in disappeared and she found herself sitting on thin air. It reappeared again and encompassed her like a huge concert hall. The waterfall was at once beside her and very far away, then not there at all. She saw stars.

She felt herself wanting to puke.

Her stomach doing cartwheels, she grabbed the lenses and pulled with trembling hands. They unlatched, swinging back up and away from her face. She gasped for air.

The strap came away with shaking, sweaty hands and Skyla threw the goggles back into the backpack as if they were alive and rabid. She took long, controlled breaths of the rich pine air. Her eyes stayed closed until the dizziness subsided.

She looked at Orrin. The raven looked back at her.

“Did you know that would happen?”

Squawk
.

She stared at the closed rucksack, then at her surroundings, not entirely convinced that they were real. She touched the concrete, touched her face. It was nearly an hour later before she felt comfortable getting back to her feet.

To her left a small landing of jagged rock spiraled downward to the edge of the cliff where the forest began. Skyla took great care choosing her footing, testing every foothold, not entirely certain which rocks were real and which ones weren’t.

Here lies The Wilds
, she remembered the childhood warning,
the place where men turn mad, screaming of gods and impossible beasts, a place of infinite change, where the curtain of the world can no longer obscure what lies beneath.

She stood a moment, gazing at the thick wall of trees that seemed to yawn at her like a mouth.

Skyla took one last breath and stepped through.

Chapter 5

“So glad to finally meet you,” said Chief Constable Perlandine. “The archbishop said to expect a visit.”

Perlandine was a stout man with a wide dark mustache that curled upward at the ends. His navy blue uniform bulged in odd places betraying years of comfort and privilege, its brass buttons doing their best not to pop off from the strain. His helmet sat on one corner of his desk, the traditional gold shield emblazoned on the front. His eyes squinted as he reached out a meaty paw and pumped The Reverend’s hand so hard it was as if he thought coins might fall out. After shaking hands, the two men sat opposite each other in large comfortable-looking leather chairs near a wide window.

Perlandine offered a cigar to the Reverend from a cherry wood box.

“Hard to get cigars like these, from what I hear,” said Lyle, admiring the label stamped on the brown skin of his cigar.

“They’re nice aren’t they?”

“Very much so,” Lyle said, letting his eyes wander over the room.

The two men puffed away for a moment, settling into their surroundings. The Reverend considered the deep walnut-paneled walls and the various trophies that lined the shelves. The elephant tusks, carved with precision to resemble a sky-bound kingdom; a necklace made of tiger claws; gold plated guns and swords; rare crystals the size of a child’s head; all of them unique and finely crafted—all of them illegal.

Souvenirs
, thought Lyle.
The man likes his souvenirs
.

An elaborate military uniform covered a fitting dummy in one corner of the room, an ornate saber dangling from its belt. An empty general’s hat sat atop the dummy; gold and blue feathers grew from it like wild ferns.

“You used to be militia?” Lyle finally asked.

“Why yes,” Perlandine said, inflating in his chair as he spoke. “Holy Guard. That was ages ago. Seems police work is the only money to be made by men who can use a gun these days.”

“Well you seem to have done well for yourself,” Lyle said. He held the cigar out. “I assume these gifts come with the job?”

Perlandine shifted in his seat, causing the chair to squeak. “Those,” he said, “are from the last and only successful raid on the Lassimir settlement. They are, I dare say, about twenty years old.”

“They hold up.”

“Indeed they do.”

“Lassimir is a city?”

“It is, of sorts. Illegitimate.” He pronounced it “ill-
ee-gittimate
”.

“I see,” said Lyle. “Gypsies?”

“Gypsies, bandits, vagrants… pirates,” said Perlandine, taking a puff. “The refuse that flows from the cities finds its way there.”

He slid back in his chair as if settling in for a long story. Lyle waited for him to adjust himself, wondering just how long the man would make him wait. Perlandine continued. “Lassimir is an undocumented city that sits along the river of the same name. There is some history I won’t bore you with, about how it came to be called that. Either way, you might remember passing over it as you entered the city by train.”

Lyle nodded politely, waiting.

“The Lassimir River is a popular detour for trading barges,” said the Chief Constable. “They send smaller lighter boats in through the sound to trade items that The Church would find… questionable. Over the years, the tent city has grown exponentially. They pretty much dominate trade throughout the region, much to the distaste of the citizens of Rhinewall and here, of course.”

“I am familiar with Rhinewall,” said Lyle.
More familiar than you’ll ever know
, he thought.

Perlandine nodded and continued. “We attempted to disperse the Lassimir encampment several decades ago.”

“How did that work out for you?” Lyle grinned. He had already heard the mutterings from businessmen about the pirate town that would not die, but instead flooded the markets with cheap, illegal goods.

“Oh, it worked just fine,” said Perlandine with a dry chuckle. “If you count the few stragglers we managed to actually catch. Hardly worth the effort. A year or two after the raid, they simply set up camp again. They came out of the woods and planted their tents as if nothing had ever happened. Then the cataclysms began, the Flux being what it is—”

“Why not just raid them again?”

“It’s expensive, frankly,” said Perlandine. “Our cities have limited funds to support such endeavors. The landscape, as you well know, is very dense between here and Lassimir, nearly impossible to send an army through except single file. People speak of the forest being haunted… crazy talk if you ask me, but you can’t pay most soldiers enough to go through there. They call it The Wilds for a reason, Reverend.”

“Burn it,” Lyle said through the smoke.

“Tried,” Perlandine said. “Grows back faster than we can move through. The smoke drives the men insane and the coastal fog keeps everything too damn moist.”

Lyle took a long grotesque puff on his cigar, spewing a long, slow plume of blue smoke. His expression was thoughtful.

“Why not just invade by sea… via the river? Rhinewall has access to naval vessels I assume. The river seems wide enough.”

“Wide, but not deep,” Perlandine said. “The depth of the river makes it accessible by wide, shallow ships, but nothing ironclad would be able to navigate it. A dreadnaught would ground itself as soon as it left the Rhinewall ports. You’ll notice that Bollingbrook does not have a navy for a reason. We have access to docks, but only small ships.”

“Small vessels then,” Lyle said, growing impatient with the list of excuses.

“Over the last, say, ten years or so, the pirate town has achieved a much stronger foothold. They have artillery, ballistae and cannons. Any ships that are not welcome are almost instantly dispatched.” Perlandine puffed bitterly on his cigar. “Ships who wish to do business with Lassimir use a semaphore code… a complex lamp signal to gain access.”

“I am aware of what a semaphore is,” Lyle said, smiling.
You patronizing ass.
“How hard would it be to crack the code?”

Perlandine chuckled. “That’s a mystery. The code is changed frequently and only those who have done business with Lassimir are told the next signal to use. We’ve tried and the ships have never come back.”