by J. P. Oakes
He waits. Did he get it right? Was there enough honesty? Enough hope? Did he make sure that this fragile alliance of factions will hold?
And then the crowd starts to roar. So, Skart guesses that he did.
Knull
Knull doesn’t know why the hit squad from Cotter’s apartment haven’t found him yet. Perhaps he put enough distance between himself and them that they lost his trail. Perhaps his escape plan was a good one and his dive into the dumpster masked his flight. Or perhaps his plan was so spectacularly stupid that no one seriously thought he would try it.
To be fair, at this point Knull isn’t even sure how long he was unconscious for.
He is, however, certain that he won’t be able to put any weight on his ankle for a while. His leg throbs at him with a dull kind of anger.
He sits up slowly, takes stock. The brick of Dust is still there. The plastic wrapping is dirty and scuffed, but it has held fast. Whatever else he knew, Cotter knew how to protect his product.
Next, when he dares to look, Knull finds his ankle is swollen but the skin is unbroken. There is no white jut of bone to greet his gaze. It is just a sprain, he thinks.
Finally, there is the question of who exactly it was that was shooting at him. Surely the same group that killed Cotter. But in that case, why weren’t they in Cotter’s apartment when Knull arrived? Could there be two parties interested in stealing from Cotter in one night? He was in such a hurry to flee the apartment that he doesn’t even know if his pursuers were fae or goblin. Hopefully they are similarly clueless about his own identity.
In the end, he decides, if he has truly shaken his pursuers, he will never have to worry about their identity again. All he needs to worry about is selling this vast brick of Dust. If he can do that, he is set.
Every journey to boundless riches, though, begins with a single step, and Knull’s first step needs to be figuring out how to get out of a dumpster when he can’t even stand.
He roots through the junk that surrounds him. Somehow, he expected the dumpster’s contents to be softer. It is full of broken bricks and spars of wood shot through with mounds of plaster dust and snarls of electric cord. He is lucky, he realizes, that his only injury is to his ankle.
He strikes two other escape routes off his mental list.
Rummaging around, he finds two pieces of wood and secures his ankle between them, cinching the makeshift brace tight with old plastic wrapping. He adds reinforcements made from strips of discarded wooden paneling, securing the cheap pine with lengths of old electrical cord. It’s clumsy and will click with every step he takes, but at least he will be able to walk.
He pulls himself to his feet, discovers fresh aches and additional cuts on his arms and legs. At first, he’s unwilling to heave the Dust over the side before he gets out, scared to let it out of his sight for even that long, but in the end practicality wins out. He dumps it, then grips the side of the dumpster and, inch by inch, hauls himself out onto the street.
His footsteps are fumbling. The Dust is no easier to carry now than it was before. Here on the street, his precious cargo feels more like a liability than ever before. He wishes he’d worn a coat he could wrap around it, or that the dumpster had claimed some old discarded drop cloth. Carrying it like this feels like a form of nakedness. If he were carrying a flashing sign while screaming, “Mug me!” he wouldn’t be much more obvious.
Still, this part of town is quieter than most Knull frequents. Cotter’s penthouse is in The Bends, one of the better parts of the Fae Districts. Families have tucked their children into bed already. The bars will close at curfew. Knull has a chance to make it back to his pad in one piece. He just needs his luck to hold.
For twenty minutes he thinks it has. For twenty minutes the Iron City lets him think he’s okay as he hobbles down empty streets and dark alleys. It plays him right up until he turns the corner onto the street that houses the tumbledown squat where he has been crashing rent-free for the past two years.
There, he sees something that makes him stop. Two figures. They pace back and forth outside the dirty piece of canvas that hides the entrance to his makeshift home. His heart stops along with his feet. He expects guns. He expects shouts. Whoever chased him from Cotter’s knew who he was after all, knew where to find him, knew…
Except no. They didn’t. Because as he lurks in the shadows, Knull realizes he knows this pair just as well as he knows that every drug deal is a fuck-up waiting to happen. And he knows without a shadow of a doubt that he has fucked up.
Because the tourists from the bar clearly aren’t as unfamiliar with this part of town as he thought. They obviously know someone he knows. And whoever that fae is, they are also just as obviously an asshole, because they have given up Knull’s home address. And now, two gnomes who bought a bag of Dust from him that was about as potent as an octogenarian’s magic wand are standing outside his door, and they do not look like they want to discuss their refund politely.
Sil
Fae are coming out of doorways. They’re coming down off the roofs. They are dressed in black. They are carrying hard wooden batons. Kerchiefs are pulled up to their eyes.
Sil stands before the hood of the car, feet spread, knees bent. She is a coiled spring. She is wondering exactly which ambitious lordling in House Red hired them. She wonders if she will have the opportunity to beat it out of someone.
The fae are in the streets now, a mix of half-brownies, flame-haired half-kobolds, and towering demi-dryads with bark-encrusted fists. Sil counts them quickly. Twelve in all. Behind her it sounds like Jag is having trouble breathing.
“You weren’t meant to be here,” says a large demi-dryad whose mother was probably related to some species of ash or oak. “But I’m glad you are. Now I get to find out if you’re as good as they say.”
“What do I do?” Jag squeaks.
“Get in the car,” Sil says. “Lock the doors.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” the lead fae calls to Jag. A dryad mixed with… gnome perhaps? Or maybe kobold. Sil can’t tell exactly. “Be with you in a minute, princess.”
Sil doesn’t have time for any clever verbal ripostes, or to check and see if Jag is doing what she’s told. Now is the time to engage.
One of the part-pixies tries to dart past her. Sil jabs left, drawing her sword in one clean, clear motion. The fae manages to parry the blow, her wooden baton nearly cut in half but just stopping Sil’s blade from bisecting her bowels. Still, the force of the impact sends her to the floor.
The eleven other fae move only a fraction of a moment after Sil, lunging at her. She turns her movement into a roll, ducks below swinging batons, comes up low, sweeps out her leg. A sidhe falls. Sil rolls again, picking up speed; her blade comes out, comes down on the fallen sidhe’s neck.
The fae make no comment on their comrade’s death. The time for talk is done. This is in earnest now.
By the time she’s on her feet, she’s ensured that one more gnome mother will be wearing black in the morning. Her sword is between two of the gnome’s ribs, poking redly from his back. But his rattling death throes are trapping her blade even as she tries to rip it free.
Two fae close in, their kobold lineage evident in powerful forearms and long sharp nails. Their batons go up. Sil twists, still hanging onto her blade. She kicks one attacker in the armpit, sends him one way, his baton the other. The second half-kobold’s baton blurs past her face, her move carrying her out of range. She lets go of her blade, leg still in the air, brings the foot down on the back of the second attacker’s neck. He sprawls face first into the asphalt.
Sil is without her sword now. The eight fae still standing spread out in a circle around her. The moment holds. Then she moves. She slides across the tarmac. Eight batons go up. Eight batons fall. Sil gets the fallen half-kobold’s baton off the ground, parries the first.
She doesn’t do such a great job with the other seven.
She makes no sound as they hit her. Never let them know if it’s
working, she has been taught. Never give an inch. Always take a yard.
The batons go up again. She moves again. She grabs the second fallen fae’s baton.
Now, she comes up swinging. And her left knee doesn’t want to work anymore, and she has a sharp pain in her side, and her blood is in her eyes, but she is smiling. She has been trained for this. She has been through worse.
Sil brings the first baton directly into one dryad’s face, cracks her cheekbones and sees her eyes bulge with a spray of blood. Sil pivots, brings the tip of the second baton into another gnome’s throat. He clacks and gasps, drops to the floor clutching his neck.
Six fae spread in a circle about her.
They close again. Life blurs. Thought leaves. Action is reaction. One move leads to another, and she flows like water. Batons crack against bone. She lets out no sound. She gives up no clue. And her batons paint the air red.
Now there are two fae spread out either side of her, a pixie and the chatty half-dryad. Sil is still smiling.
It’s not joy. It never is. In truth, everything hurts. Even through the adrenaline. And these two fae still seem fresh. Rather, it is that she has been taught to smile. Opponents, she has been told, find it unnerving if she smiles as she kills.
She launches her baton at the head of the pixie. He parries it away but it doesn’t matter. Sil’s already used the distraction to close the distance.
She brings her remaining baton up between the pixie’s legs with enough force to lift him from the ground.
That, though, gives the half-dryad enough time to get his baton around Sil’s neck.
She gets her hand up in time so it’s her own knuckles he’s crushing against her windpipe. She’s not dead yet. She gasps as best as she’s able. She kicks down against the throat of the pixie whose balls are now somewhere in orbit around his spleen. She drives the heavy heel of her boot into his throat once, twice, three times.
Black is closing in on the corners of her vision as the half-dryad throttling her wrestles her away from his fallen comrade. He’s yelling. He’s upset. She wants to be able to use that, but she can’t get enough air to taunt him. She wants to smash her skull into his nose but he’s a full head taller than her, and he’s crushing her against his chest. He’s leaning back, putting his weight into it, making it hard for her to get enough leverage to kick his kneecaps. He knows what he’s doing.
The fae has his feet set wide. She swings her legs back between them. Then she heaves herself forward, pushes off his ribs with her elbows. Her neck creaks with pain. She wants to scream but she can’t get the air. She folds her legs, drives her heels as hard as she can into the dryad’s knees. Does it again and again, hearing him grunt with pain. One kneecap goes, sliding away beneath her impact, and she feels her opponent’s scream of pain more than she hears it. They go skidding sideways, the baton still around her neck. All the light still fading.
They hit the ground and the grip on her neck goes slack. She rolls away gasping, struggles to all fours, counting the seconds she can expend. Then she’s up. Her sword is still sprouting from the chest of the gnome she skewered. She plucks it free, flicks blood from the blade.
The half-dryad is trying to get up. His leg buckles and he screams. She dips the tip of her blade into his throat. He convulses, goes still, all the fight leaking out of him and spilling over the dirty ground.
And that is the fight all done. There are four fae still breathing, but Sil knows they’re broken before they do. Then they turn and run. She takes a second, just one, to inhale, to reset.
She looks up, checks the car. Jag is not in it. A quickening of the pulse. She scans. She sighs. Typical.
Jag is running. Jag is panicking. She is not looking. She has not seen the fae stepping out of the shadows, right in front of her.
Jag is tall for a goblin, with the well-toned physique that wealth, privilege, and personal trainers allow. She comes up to this fae’s chest. A dryad surely, all sinew and pent-up rage—the protector of some oak tree long since turned to wood chips.
Jag steps back. Sil hears a squeak of fright.
Sil is forty yards away. She is fast, but she is not that fast. She cannot cover the distance in time.
The dryad cracks her knuckles. Sil takes aim.
She launches her sword as hard as she can. It whirls end-over-end. It whistles past Jag’s ear. She squeaks again as the blade splits the massive dryad’s face.
“Timber,” Sil whispers to herself as the dryad falls.
It takes Jag a while to get it together, to stumble back to her. She leans heavily against the car roof. “Are you OK?” She reaches out a hand to Sil. Sil brushes it off. “Did they…?” Jag looks up and down the street. “What the fuck was that?”
Sil still can’t talk. Her throat hurts too much. She shrugs. She hobbles to the car.
“You should sit down,” Jag says. “You’re hurt.”
Sil ignores her. She looks at the engine. The fan belt is still broken. The car is still so much useless metal. Jag goes to the car door. Now she listens. Sil puts a hand on Jag’s. The goblin princess looks up, and Sil shakes her head.
“What?” Jag says. “The car? It won’t…?”
Sil shakes her head. She points toward the city center. The light of the Houses seems very distant from here.
“We should call someone,” Jag says. “Call the House. Have someone come and pick us up. There must be a working payphone around here somewhere.”
Sil looks at her. Until Jag gets it.
“But we can’t,” she says slowly. “Because someone made a move against us, and it could be someone in the House. We don’t know who’s loyal and who isn’t.” She looks around. “A cab…?”
Sil shakes her head.
“I know, I know. We can’t trust a fae driver.” Jag balls her fist. “My fucking father…” She looks around, increasingly desperate. “So how?”
Sil points to Jag’s feet. To the horizon.
“We have to walk?” Jag’s eyes are round circles of shock. “But… your leg. Fae just tried to assassinate us!”
Sil nods. She cannot afford to believe this will be the only attempt on them. But while the evidence suggests a plot within House Red, Sil has to assume they still have more allies there than anywhere else in the Iron City. So, she starts walking. She doesn’t wait to make sure Jag follows. Sil knows she will, and there is no time to waste on coddling her now.
The night is young, after all, and there are many miles left to go.
Bee
“Now?” Tharn says to Bee as they stand among the throng in the factory where the Iron City’s rebellious fae are gathering. That self-same crowd is providing full-throated support for Skart’s answer to Bee’s shit-stirring question. “Now, you choose to be a dick about this?”
Bee steps down from the chair he found to put his head above the crowd and throws up his hands. “If not now, when? The whole point of participating in this uprising is to help shape its future. Now is our chance to interrogate its architects.”
“Now, you can posture in front of a crowd. Vain as a goddamn sidhe.”
“Hey,” a sidhe protests nearby, but there’s not much belligerence in it.
Bee grins. “For someone who preaches unity, Tharn, you think in painfully binary ways.”
Tharn rolls his eyes. Bee steps up on his box again, watches as Skart on his makeshift stage puts down another question.
“—why unity is critical. The goblins must face a united front.”
Someone whoops.
Bee feels like there is something slippery about the way Skart answers questions. The down-home honesty seems like a front. For all that he hands out answers as if he is doing his best to be as clear as he can, there is something purposefully evasive in all he is saying.
“You say you can’t predict the future,” Bee yells. “That’s fair. But you can speak to intent. You can speak to hope. So, I ask you this, can you assure me that your intent here and now is to establish a futu
re where we coexist in peace with the goblins? Can you assure me that you don’t intend a return to old ways?”
He steps down. He smiles savagely. Deal with that one, you old bastard, he thinks.
Up on the stage, Skart licks his lips. “What do I want?” he says. He cocks his head to one side. “Me?” Then he smiles. “I want my childhood. I want a world gone away. I want my family back. I want my mother and father not slaughtered before me. I want trees to the heavens, and birdsong in my ears. I want streams running clear. I want to run free with them. I want everything the world promised me.” He looks Bee straight in the eye. “That’s what I want. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?
“But—” And now Skart looks away from Bee towards the crowd. He spreads his arms. “This isn’t about me. This is about us. That’s the point of our movement. That’s the point of unity. It’s about the collective. It’s about the whole. It’s about a future we negotiate together.”
And it is so close to what Bee said earlier, he knows he should dive onboard. He should raise his fist and swear to bring it down on whatever skull the rebellion asks. And yet, still he hesitates. Because Skart has answered, and answered with honesty, and yet he has also skirted around the heart of the question.
But the tide in the room is rising. Voices are lifting. Fae are cheering. The excitement boils. Skart is shouting, directing fae to speak to coordinators, to get locations that they will need to take and hold.
Bee looks to Tharn, to the rest of the Fae Liberation Front.
“What?” Tharn asks him. “What has he said that you disagree with? Tell me so I can cram your hypocrisy so far down your throat that you shit it out again.”
Bee shrugs. “It’s how he said it.”
Beside them, Harretta laughs. She’s not the only member of the Fae Liberation Front to do so.