A Latent Dark (33 page)

“You listen to me,
Gans
—what is your first name?”

The boy looked down. “Arthur, sir.”

“Listen to me Arthur,” Harry said, his voice becoming softer. “One day you will meet someone who will constitute the very air you breathe. They will be your entire reason for waking up each morning. If you are very lucky, that person will marry you and she will bear your children.”—he was holding the case like a preacher with a bible—“I pray, Arthur that you never go through what I have, but I’ll tell you this much: if you ever did, and you knew what we know about this city, you would want to take a more… direct approach.”

Arthur stared at his shoes. “But, it’s wrong, sir.”

“Wrong?” Harold snapped. “If you want to see wrong we can dig up my daughter and you can see the way this,”—he opened the case and pointed to a long scalpel, its blade darkened—“opened her throat.”

“But you don’t
know!
” Arthur glared at him, his eyes wet with frustration.

Harold let out a breath. “You’re right Arthur,” he folded the case back up and tucked it under his arm. “But I’d like you to show me one police officer willing to find The Reverend Lyle Summers and arrest him.”

Arthur Gansworth opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Harold was right, of course. Any guards not off raiding a city miles away were too busy trying to maintain order in Bollingbrook.

“The Reverend Lyle Summers knew this,” he said. “He knew the city would be too busy with its war to care about something as petty as a missing girl. Why do you think he didn’t even bother hiding this?”

Arthur looked at the case. “But… why?”

Harold dropped his hands to his side. “I don’t know Arthur. But I do know where he went.”

“But how?” The boy’s eyes were wide.

“The same way I knew it was his signature on those books. The same way I know now why he chose to keep me so close to him.”

Harold started toward the door. Arthur stumbled after him, too powerless to stop him and too confused to stop himself. Arthur hadn’t even been issued a gun. They got to the door and Harold looked at him with cold, dark eyes.

“Arthur,” he said. “I am going to go to the bank, so that you can see what I know. Then I am going to Lassimir. After that I am going to Rhinewall. You can come along if you intend to stop me, but I’d like to see you try.”

Arthur ran to catch up as the man turned and headed down the hallway.

“But how will you—”

Harold explained everything as they left the hotel.

Chapter 23

In Marley’s mind they were no longer people, just targets: Guard One and Guard Two. They stood quivering as the Reverend Summers stepped out the door.

He was furious, but not at the Reverend. Marley was furious with himself.

Poison. You really thought subtlety would work for a change. Idiot. It sure didn’t work last time.

Guard Two on the right fired almost as soon as the Reverend Summers exited the tavern, but the bullet only buzzed by Marley, already in motion. The bullet passed his cheek as he swung, sinking his ringed fist into the front of Guard One’s helmet. There was momentary resistance as the armor gave and snapped, followed by a meatier snap from within. He compressed the man’s face hard enough to dislodge an eye, shatter the nose, and crush the jaw. Guard One did something resembling a backwards somersault and landed under a table.

As he retracted his arm, he noticed two things: first, Guard Two was raising the rifle to fire again, and second, two more soldiers were entering in through the front door. Marley grinned at Guard Three and Four wolfishly as they stormed in.

Leaping over the bar and grabbing the barrel of the gun, Marley swung Guard Two into the entering soldiers. Guard Two screamed as Guard Three’s bayonet lodged in his back. The rifle flying free, spun in the air and Marley heard the sound of shattering glass.

Through the windows and past the guards, Marley saw the Reverend walking away. Outside and above, a ladder fell from the sky beneath an enormous shadow.

While Guards Two and Three tried to untangle themselves, Marley leaned past Guard Four’s barrel as it rose up, grabbing the man’s arm and twisting. At the same time, he spun to face the others. The man’s arm snapped and bent—a splitting branch. He finished Guard Four with an elbow to the chest, feeling a rib give.

Guard Two had pulled away from the bayonet and now staggered bent over, bleeding a pool onto the floor. Marley swept his leg under Guard Three before he could recover. The man fell backwards, but not before Marley grabbed his head in a lock as he fell. A wet pop, and the soldier’s neck was broken.

He had honestly been surprised to see Guard Two still alive and drawing his revolver, firing and nicking Marley in the shoulder. There was the smell of gunpowder and smoke, lots of smoke.

Marley pulled Guard Two toward him, throwing out his elbow to break the neck. It did. The armored man went limp to the floor and Marley coughed. Black smoke had gathered in the tavern, so thick he couldn’t see the rafters.

He stumbled out the door, exiting The Hungry Skunk for the last time.

*

Even now he could smell the smoke as it rose through the trees as the tavern burned.

For a man his size, Marley was surprisingly adept as he drifted unseen between the burnt-out hollows and scorched trees. Lassimir was a charcoal crescent in the middle of a lush green forest. The few remaining structures were the shanties that survived the fires and a couple of tents. Everything else was ash.

In the fading light, Marley was a shadow painted in coal and dirt. A scarlet line streaked down his left shoulder, a souvenir from Guard Two’s pistol. Against the body paint it looked like a ribbon as he huddled behind burnt branches and trunks. A small green stalk sprouted inches from his nose.

He watched from the crook of a blackened tree trunk as soldiers carried the dead, lugging them to the center of town where they tossed the corpses unceremoniously into a large crater that, only a day ago, sat spectators and vendors. The corpses fell like burnt bags of wheat and vanished from view. What had been an arena was now a mass grave.

The docks were beyond the pit, easy to spot now that no structures stood in the way. The invasion barge merged with the land. Lassimir citizens—now slaves—labored at gunpoint, folding deflated airship bags and erecting new tents to house the occupying soldiers. They drudged back and forth from the barge to the land. Many of them had been banished from Bollingbrook, the very city that now enslaved them.

He decided he would wait until night, reach the docks and steal a boat to Rhinewall. In the meantime, he was preoccupied with the voices that came from the nearest structure. Someone was getting drunk.

“Did you see the one kid that tried to hit me?” said a voice.

“The shield fighter?”

“Yeah.” There was a pause and then laughter. “Hit me right in the shoulder too. Look at that mark.”

“Those rings hurt.”

The first man made a
pshaw
sound. “It looks worse than it is.”

“You can almost see the pattern.” He sounded fascinated. “Looks like a skull, maybe. At least it makes a nice souvenir. Did you keep the ring?”

“Francis took the ring after the man died. Ask him.”

“They don’t stop bullets very well do they?”

Both men laughed, and a warm prickle felt its way up the back of Marley’s skull, making his brow furrow. He began to wonder how many more of them he could kill before they stopped him.

A door opened unexpectedly and both men shuffled as they stood to attention. Marley heard footsteps and some orders being barked. There was silence and then the heavy sound of boots on wood.

“At ease,” said a new voice.

“Sir, we were just—” said the first man.

“Drinking?”

Another pause.

“Yes sir, we—”

“Were just about to pour your general a drink?”

There was an awkward silence and then nervous laughter.

“Sir. Yes sir!”

Chairs scuffed the floor and boards creaked, as Perlandine got comfortable. Marley heard the sound of glasses clinking and muttered words that he couldn’t make out. More laughter and then some silence again as the men relaxed.

“How’s your chest, corporal? Have you shown the cleric yet?”

“No, sir,” said the corporal. “It only looks bad.”

Perlandine hummed. “You might want to. I’ve known fighters to poison their rings, or sully them to kill a man days later.”

“I will sir, thank you.”

Marley listened as the men drank into the evening, telling exaggerated tales of bravery against the mostly unarmed men they had killed. The more they drank, the bolder their claims. They began to talk about the women and Marley thought again about sneaking in to kill them. But he wanted information first.

“So how long do we have to stay in this wreck of a town?” one of the men asked. “I’m already bored.”

“We’ll send half the forces out in a couple days once we’ve cleaned up and tracked down any runners that were too dumb to leave for good. They like to hide in the trees. I’ve known them to live that way for months.”

One of the men groaned. Formalities were forgotten behind the veil of booze.

“I’d just as soon slash and burn the entire forest.”

“We might,” Perlandine said. “It all depends on whether The Reverend Inspector finds what he’s looking for in Rhinewall.”

Marley perked up at the city name. He pressed his muddy ear to the wall. The window cast a warm square of light out into the evening.

“Is he still after that girl?” one man said chuckling. “That always sounded like some sort of rumor to me.”

Another soldier chimed in: “Preacher’s got a real hard-on for the girl from what I hear. Burned her house down when
Willcox
and he found it.”

“They found it?”

“Yep,” the soldier said. “Found it and burned it. The Reverend likes to burn, from what I hear.” He laughed.

“Is it true what they said about Charlie?”

“Yeah, barkeep poisoned him.”

They all took a moment to toast their fallen comrades. Glasses clinked together again. There was a reverent pause before anyone spoke.

“If either of you are interested,” Perlandine said. “We’ll need more men in Rhinewall if he has in fact found her. We’ll be sending the rest of the boats in a day.”

“I’ll go,” said the corporal. “And
Stykes
here. You’ve never been to Rhinewall?”

There was a pause as
Stykes
shook his head.

“They have a Tinker’s Guild there. Most amazing thing you’ve ever seen.”

“I’ll have to see it,” the man said. “I hear the barmaids aren’t bad either.”

Perlandine interjected: “It’s much more than a Tinker’s Guild, son. It is a full-scale laboratory.”

“He told you about it?”

There was a pause while glasses were filled. Perlandine continued.

“He did, a little. Claims they can perform miracles.”

“Claims,” a soldier said. “I can
claim
to have a bedroom full of virgins, that doesn’t make it true.”