City of Iron and Dust

by J. P. Oakes

  And then the magic goes away, and they come back, and they pay Knull so that they can do it all again.

  So now, the gnome’s pupils dilate, and wind sweeps his hair. Knull watches a snake weave a crown upon the gnome’s forehead, and grass pushes up through the linoleum at his feet. Sunlight seems to reflect in his eyes.

  And then it’s over, the moment gone. The snake slithers back into nothingness. The grass wilts and all that’s left beneath the gnome’s feet are cracked tiles and stale puddles. He gasps, staggers, and grins.

  “Shit, yes,” he says.

  The gnomes count out tin cogs. Knull tries to not salivate. He fishes the bag labelled “Midsommar Dreams” over. The gnomes high five each other, and then, when their backs are turned, Knull heads for the door as fast as he possibly can.

  Jag

  The band takes a break. Jag doesn’t. She gesticulates with her cigarette. She expounds upon a theme.

  “This,” she says, “is real. Right here. Right now. That’s what fae music is about. It’s about the intersection of out there and in here.” She taps her sternum. “That’s the problem with goblin music, Bazzack. It’s all externally focused. It’s all indicative of a conqueror’s mindset.”

  Bazzack—the target of this rant—is underwhelmed. He is the son of a minor colonel within House Red Cap’s ranks. A rich, young, bored goblin, whose rough edges money cannot fully erase. They have known each other forever, and she is far enough out of his league within their house’s hierarchy that she felt confident to bring him here without having to suffer through any painful flirtation. Still, platonic familiarity comes with its downsides.

  “You do have a rough sense,” Bazzack says, “of how absurdly pretentious you sound right now, don’t you?”

  And the thing is, Jag does. She knows what she is and where she is. She knows how both Bazzack and the fae see her sitting here. But she also knows that doesn’t stop her words from being true. It doesn’t stop her fellow goblins from needing to hear them. To hear them and realize that it’s not just posing, or an angle, or a new look for this season’s balls.

  Bazzack, though, Jag is coming to see, is not the goblin who is going to make that realization.

  “This,” Bazzack says, just to ensure his particular brand of boorish ennui gets its moment in the spotlight, “is poor fae music, in a poor fae bar, in a poor excuse for a neighborhood. And the brooding-artiste look may get your suitors to feign a little more sensitivity, but don’t pretend to be so naïve that you imagine that solicitude will last past the moment when they finally talk their way between your bedsheets.”

  “That—” Jag leans forward. “—is exactly what I’m talking about. You’re seeing all this as a pose, as something put on for others to observe. You can’t for a moment picture this as something genuine, and that’s the whole—” She stabs with the cigarette. “—damn problem. Because this music isn’t anything about that. It’s about revealing the internal.”

  She glances back at Sil. At her half-fae half-sister. Her father’s bastard daughter. She looks to see if any of this is getting through. To see if any of her sidhe mother’s heritage is being unlocked. “What do you think, Sil?” she asks.

  Sil looks at her for half a second. “The music could be a useful cover in the opening moments of a fight, for whoever wishes to initiate it.”

  Bazzack laughs. Jag gives Sil a pleading look.

  “It may also serve to mask anyone approaching me from behind,” Sil says.

  Bazzack laughs harder. Sil is entirely unfazed by his amusement. The only movement in her face comes from her eyes, which go back to dispassionately scanning the bar and its occupants.

  “I don’t know why you bother with her,” Bazzack says. “Her blood is tainted with—” He raises his voice. “—fae bullshit.” The crowd studiously avoids reacting. Bazzack sneers. “You know your father doesn’t want you doing this. She is a servant. Nothing more.”

  Jag shakes her head, reaches out, puts a hand on Sil’s arm. “She is my sister.” Sil doesn’t react in the slightest.

  “She is the accidental result of your father indulging his urges.”

  “How she came into this world is of no concern to me,” Jag says, keen to move on from the idea of her father in the moment of conception. “She is here nonetheless, and what is happening here is part of her culture and her heritage.”

  It would be an easier argument to make if Sil was willing to give the impression she had any sort of emotional range beyond that of the pint glass on the table before Jag.

  “You can dress this shit show and your indulgence of it,” Bazzack says, stifling a belch, “in any pretty words you want. But they are literally on stage, putting on a show. It’s all bullshit. Just—” another grin “—like you.”

  Sil

  She knows how she will do it if Jag asks her. Pirouette around the chair, stab her sword directly into Bazzack’s ballsack. Such a small target, she thinks, will at least make it something of a challenge.

  Edwyll

  The evening twists on. Deeper and darker. Glasses rise and fall. Spirits move along with them. It’s easy to be despondent in the Fae Districts. It’s easy to focus on the cloying air and the dirt-smeared walls, and think about what was here before the Iron Wall. It’s easy to think about what could be if the fae weren’t cut off from their magic.

  Some, though, would rather call bullshit on such defeatist attitudes. Some think that there is still the potential for beauty left in the world, and that the sun still shines if only the fae would stop and lift their heads, and see it beyond the chimney smoke.

  Edwyll is such a fae. Edwyll thinks he has a medium and a message. Edwyll is trying to channel his mentor, Lila, and create the beauty he wants to see in the world. He is trying to create something that will remind his fellow fae that life did not end fifty years ago.

  He hunches over a table in the corner of the bar. He stabs and dabs with his paintbrush, trying to capture the feeling that rose within him as the band played, building counterpoints of orange and blue, shifting tones of yellow sliding into red. He tries to make the kobold-hair bristles move the way his body wanted to move as the beat bounced through him.

  And yet still, despite his conviction, despite his brave face, despondency lurks.

  The problem, as ever, is money. Because even if he is successful in his transformation of elation into a visual medium, who will pay for it? Who will put enough food on his table that he’ll still be alive next week to create the next painting?

  Edwyll isn’t even meant to be in this bar. He’s meant to be running home to grab some materials for his next big project. He’s meant to be checking that his drug-addled parents haven’t puked themselves to death. But he saw a flyer in the window about bartenders being wanted and then the proprietor needed to deal with some crisis or other, and he’s been waiting for half an hour, and the band started to play, and the spirit moved within him.

  But now he’s hungry again, and the art isn’t quite what he wanted, and the spirit is starting to get sluggish.

  He sits back, looks up, surveys the bar, these fae he wants to lift up out of poverty, these fae he is too poor to uplift, and then he sees them. Brownies knocking back spiced nectar. Two green leaves sitting about the blue, brown, and red bodies of the fae… surely not.

  He blinks. He tries to make sure.

  Two goblins. Two goblins sitting in the crowd. Two goblins slumming it for the night.

  Two potential patrons.

  He looks down at what he has accomplished on the scrap of canvas he’s holding. And screw it. It’s good enough.

  He’s up and on his feet, pushing through the crowd before he has a chance to second-guess himself. He’s standing in front of them before he’s had a chance to figure out what he’s actually going to say.

  “Great music, right?”

  No. Not that. That was not the thing to say.

  Two pairs of startled yellow eyes turn to him. He swallows.

&nbs
p; “It’s amazing what great art can do, right?” He taps his chest. “Uplift the heart. Uplift the spirit. Change the whole world one heart and mind at a time.” He flashes a smile.

  Against all odds, the female goblin’s face actually lights up. In defiance of logic, she smiles.

  Then the male grabs the painting out of Edwyll’s hand, and sneers at the paint he’s just smeared.

  “Peasant art,” he slurs. “I thought you lot were meant to be good at this shit. I thought you were meant to be good for at least one thing.”

  “Hey, asshole—” are perhaps not the best words to deal with this situation, but they are the first two out of Edwyll’s mouth.

  The goblin stands, sending his chair flying backward.

  “What did you call me?”

  Edwyll knows very well what he called him. He just doesn’t know if he’s willing to repeat it.

  Instead of repetition, though, escalation. Before Edwyll can open his mouth, a large brownie puts his hand on the goblin’s shoulder. There are no butterfly wings on this fae. He is heavy-set, slabs of muscle scarred with burns and painted with tattoos. An ore miner on his way to the night shift that most of his kind prefer. He has rolled up his sleeves. His wrists are the breadth of the goblin’s thighs.

  “This is the wrong part of town, son,” the brownie says, “to say shit like that.”

  The goblin pushes the hand away. “I,” he says, “am the only good thing to ever happen to this shitty little bar, and this shitty part of town. If I am here, then it is exactly where I am supposed to be. You, peasant, are the one out of place in my city.”

  Edwyll closes his eyes. Because he has always wanted his art to move people. He has always wanted it to create change in the world. But this is not what he had in mind at all.

  Jag

  Jag stands. Jag sees the faces around her. Jag blanches.

  “I’m sorry,” she says to the fae with his hand on Bazzack’s chest—a brownie, or a pixie, or some mix of the two, she can’t be sure. “You are entirely correct. My friend is an asshole. We’re leaving.”

  The brownie looks at her and Bazzack with distaste. Jag puts her faith in Sil standing behind her, in the fact that there is something in Sil’s eyes that normally speaks straight to every fae’s brain and gives them a single warning.

  Bazzack, though, has silenced enough higher cognitive functions that belligerence has become his default setting.

  “We are not leaving,” he spits. “We came here to have fun, Jag. And I am bored.” He grins at the brownie. “Five cogs,” he says. “I’ll pay you five cogs if you’ll fight her!” He points at Sil.

  No. No. That is not why Jag brought Sil here. That is the opposite of why.

  “No fae with fighting spirit left in the Iron City?” Bazzack shouts. “What if I make the pot richer? What if I pay one lead gear to anyone here who can best this half-fae in combat?”

  “Shut up,” Jag says.

  But it’s far too late for that.

  “Show me the coin,” the brownie gripping Bazzack’s shoulder says.

  “Show me something worth paying for.”

  The brownie leans in closer. “How about I just take all your coins.”

  Uncertainty rattles the bars of Bazzack’s intoxication. “Jag?” he says.

  Jag wants them to leave. But she also wants to see the smirk wiped off Bazzack’s face. She wants to punish him a little for ruining this night. “She’s not your bodyguard, Bazzack,” she says.

  Bazzack swallows. His confidence is starting to slip like an ill-fitting jacket. Nervous fingers fish out his coin.

  “Good lad,” the brownie says. He lets go of Bazzack’s shoulder, claps him on the back. “Now, I’ll kick this half-gobbo’s ass.” He nods at Sil. “Then I’ll kick yours.”

  He looks up, levels a finger at Jag. “And then I’ll kick your friend’s.”

  Sil

  The brownie’s mistake is that he has made one threat too many. Two, Sil can accept. The last, though, is taboo.

  So, she reaches for her sword, and then, with a flick of her wrist, she removes his hand.

  2

  Old Dogs. New Tricks

  Granny Spregg

  There is more to the Iron City than one small bar in one small corner of town. The Iron Wall encircles a microcosm. One that sprawls. That heaves. Cars clog its streets. Industry churns. Fae and goblins stumble through its avenues and boulevards. Theaters pump out morality plays performed by immoral actors. Street vendors hawk powdered dragon fangs to stockbrokers. Building styles shift like river currents. And at its septic heart, the great Houses rise.

  Once they would have been fortresses. Once there would have been crenellations and monsters of yore curled in deep dark dungeons. Once upon a time, though, is a distant memory in the Iron City. These Houses are modern buildings. Their inhabitants are modern goblins. Their tastes run to neither cold stone nor dark tapestries. They prefer central heating, and high thread-count sheets, and their guards armed with something that can spit out more than one bolt every thirty seconds. This is the modern world, after all, with all its modern dangers and all its modern indulgences.

  Granny Spregg would rather like it if the modern world would go fuck itself.

  Granny Spregg is a creature of a world gone away. She is a gnarled fist of a goblin. She drags her leg behind her as she stomps down one of the many, many corridors that twist and turn through House Spriggan. Her cane clack-clacks on the tiles. It was a dryad’s arm once. She cut it free herself.

  Granny Spregg looks back on the Iron War with fondness. She remembers when her hordes broke the fae army’s back. She remembers when Mab’s Kiss broke their spirit. She remembers Mab…

  Old goblin, she curses herself, as she bustles down the corridor. Thinking old goblin thoughts. Getting lost in the past, when the present is so full of snares.

  No one here dares call her Granny to her face. They all use the name behind her back. There is, she supposes, some accuracy to it, even if none of the brats her children have clogged the House’s lower floors with are legitimate.

  She uses the name in her head. It keeps the anger fresh. Keeps her lip curled and her feet moving. They carry her along the corridor now, hobbling step after step. A victor’s riches surround her. Her spoils despoiled. Fae paintings defaced. Sacred white deer, their heads mounted on plaques. A sculpture built from broken wands.

  There is more modern art as well. Creations that conform to her children’s tastes. Letting them have their own opinions, Granny Spregg thinks. That was my first mistake.

  Thacker scurries in Granny Spregg’s wake. Thacker always scurries in her wake. Granny Spregg is unsure if he is capable of any other type of movement. She moves at a pace snails would mock, and yet Thacker is always hurrying to catch up with her.

  “Are you sure this is wise, Madame?” he asks, which is the most Thacker thing to say that Granny Spregg can think of. He would probably check with her about each inhalation of breath if he knew she wouldn’t wear his balls as earrings if he did so.

  “No,” she spits at him. “Which is why I’m doing it. Certainty is the first sign of idiocy.” She grimaces. “My children are always certain.”

  Thacker is not an idiot. He is neurotic as a brownie, and an anxious thorn in her britches, but he is not an idiot. It is why she tolerates him. She likes certainty only in her lovers, not in those she keeps around for intelligent conversation.

  “Perhaps we should…” Thacker starts, but Granny Spregg is unwilling to let him get to the word “reconsider.”

  She wheels on him, brings the cane to bear on his throat, and he almost scuttles right into it. She advances on him, pushing him back to the wall.

  “Tonight, Thacker,” she says. “I have tonight. That’s it. To take it all back. This house. My house. All the years of effort and this is it. Eight meager hours. The package is in the city. It is all in play. And I will not have you fuck it up for me. Do you understand, or must I sacrifice a pawn this ea
rly in the evening?”

  Thacker swallows. He nods.

  Granny Spregg hits him with the cane. “Yes, you understand, or yes, I must sacrifice you, you dullard?”

  Thacker cowers. “I understand,” he says, whimpering. “I understand.”

  She turns her back on him. She stomps down the corridor. She reaches the door. It has taken longer than she wanted it to. Everything does these days. The door is large, steel-mounted, and monitored. Granny Spregg raises a vein-knotted fist to knock.

  “Well, then,” she says to Thacker, “here we go.”

  Granny Spregg summons every ounce of imperious pride left to her and shoves past the private who answers the door. Beyond this spluttering barrier, House Spriggan Military Command thrums with quiet efficiency. Goblins mutter orders into microphones with practiced monotony relaying, confirming, and processing missives. House generals lean over monitors and dispatch runners. Sergeants push figurines around a scale model of the city.

  Such is the business of protecting the House’s interests, of keeping a populace in check and thwarting the ambitions of their rivals. Such is the business she would reclaim.

  Granny Spregg does not belong in this room. There is no efficiency left in her body. Eyes turn to look at her.

  She points at one goblin in full regalia. Her knuckles are large as walnuts. “General Callart,” she says through her self-loathing, “I need a moment of your time and a division of your soldiers.”

  General Callart, she knows, can be relied on to be professional. Her presence here is unorthodox these days, but he will always be a slave to the hierarchy of command, and even now, she still outranks him.

  “Of course, Madame Spregg,” he says smoothly while the bustle of the room resumes. “If you could furnish me with the details, then—”

  “Perhaps before that,” a voice cuts in, “you could furnish me with a ‘what the fuck?’”

  Another goblin steps out from behind a pillar of monitors. He is draped in unearned medals, drowning in aiguillettes. He is Privett Spregg in all his glory and absurdity.