by J. P. Oakes
Knull spins, fists up. What he plans to do with them is beyond Skart.
“Hey!” Skart holds up his hands, palms out. No threat. “Hey.” He smiles.
“What you want?” Knull keeps his distance.
Skart knows Knull, but the problem is Knull knows Skart too. Skart has been a vocal antagonist of Knull’s supplier, Cotter, for years. That was what had given tonight’s plans much of their symmetry, what had made them so satisfying. Many a time Skart has mounted a soapbox and declared Dust an important weapon for social liberation, and decried those who see it only as a means of personal advancement. He has told fae not to buy from Cotter’s dealers. He has told fae not to buy from Knull.
Which all makes it feel a little awkward when he says, “I’m looking to buy some Dust.”
“From me?” Suspicion burns in Knull’s eyes like a fever.
Is there any way, Skart wonders, to make this sound believable?
Inspiration strikes. “Ironically,” he says, “from Cotter. I need bulk and I need it fast, and my usual supply has dried up.”
Knull, Skart knows, knows Cotter is dead. Knull knows that Skart knows that Cotter is dead. But for all this knowledge, Skart doesn’t have a clue what Knull is going to do next.
Knull hesitates. “You hate Cotter,” he says.
“I’m desperate,” Skart says. “The city is desperate. Tonight is desperate.” He’s warming to his theme. “I need to make a deal, and I need to make it now. I will make it with anyone.”
Too much? he wonders.
“How much?” Knull asks.
Maybe not.
“Thirty-eight pounds,” Skart says and immediately regrets it. It is too specific. He tries to shrug. “Give or take.”
“Yeah,” Knull says, blithe as a lamb. “I know a guy who can do that. Not Cotter, though. Someone else.”
Skart actually claps his hands. This is genuinely too easy. “Perfect,” he says. “You can bring it to me. I’ll give you the—”
“Half up front,” Knull says.
“What?” Skart stares at him.
Knull blinks. “The money,” he says, as if not sure something so painfully obvious can possibly be the source of confusion. “Half up front.”
And Skart genuinely hadn’t thought of that. He was never going to pay Cotter the back half of the Dust’s cost. He has Merrick’s fee to be sure, but the whole point of Merrick was that she was the vastly cheaper option. But he’s been so caught up in the night’s calamity the thought of Knull wanting to be paid has not entered his head once.
“But…” The pause is too long, too awkward. “But I’m not buying it from you,” he manages, which given the time, he thinks, is pretty good cover.
Knull blinks again. “Erm…” he says. “Finder’s fee.”
Improv, it seems, is not one of Knull’s skills.
Skart tries to decide how desperate he is. “How much up front?” he says.
Knull cocks his head to one side. He is practically salivating. His pupils are as wide as a Dust-head’s just as they OD.
“Street value…” he mutters. “Pure… Half up front…” He looks at Skart. He looks like he’s about to start laughing. “Million and a half golden gears.”
Skart almost punches him right there.
“Fuck you.” It’s out of Skart before he can get himself under control.
Knull shrugs. “You told me you were desperate.”
The little shit. How much can he pull together? “I’ll give you…” Skart does quick mental math. “Fifty thousand up front.”
Knull blinks again. There is low-balling, after all, and there is figuratively punching someone in the balls.
Then, abruptly, Knull’s demeanor changes. His swagger abandons him. He glances up and down the street, skittish.
“Nah,” he says. “Nah. I’m not here if you’re not serious.” He takes steps away, each one escalating the sense of panic rising in Skart’s chest. “I’m having you on, anyway,” he says. “I don’t know anyone.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Knull is spooked. Skart’s number wasn’t just insultingly low, it was scarily low. Suddenly, Knull thinks it’s a setup. He thinks Skart is just here trying to figure out how to roll him for the Dust. Which, in the end, is exactly what he’s doing.
Skart scrambles for lies. For a second time tonight, he washes up on the shore of the truth.
“I don’t have the money,” he says desperately. “Not up front. But I can get it.” He almost says You can trust me, but if there are any words more likely to set off Knull’s bullshit-meter then Skart doesn’t know what they are. “It’s for a cause,” he says instead. “It’s for the Fae Districts. It’s to liberate us. Once I have that Dust, I can make sure you get as many golden gears as you want.”
Which with the sort of power the Dust would fuel, he could actually do.
He won’t. But he could.
Knull looks at him, weighing him. He shakes his head. “Fuck off,” he says.
“There’s nothing?” Skart says. “Not an ounce of feeling in your heart for your fellow fae? There’s no one here you want to save?”
“Yeah there is,” Knull says. “That’s why I want three million golden gears.”
“You think too small.” Skart’s frustration can’t help but leak out between his gritted teeth.
“What?” Knull says. “You think I should ask for five?”
Skart is on the verge of resorting to violence when suddenly he pauses. He stares. Because just as suddenly, a group has appeared in the street. And they should not be here.
Knull sees Skart’s look, hesitates, then glances over his shoulder. His body goes rigid. “Oh shit,” he says. “Gobbos.”
A group of ten, hooded, dressed in black, armed. A commando group.
“Spriggans,” Skart says.
“What?” Knull is slowly stepping away.
“Yellow ribbons,” Skart says. He can see the insignia on their arms. “House Spriggan. They shouldn’t be here.”
Why are they here? And Skart knows it for a certainty now: he’s been away from the rebellion too long.
The pack of Spriggans turns, sees them. Skart grabs Knull’s arms.
“Let us,” he says, “continue negotiations elsewhere. Right now, we need to run.”
Knull looks down at his ankle. Skart gives him a sour smile.
“Try.”
Jag
Jag is still trying not to run. She’s getting worse at it.
Even as midnight approaches, the Fae Districts are buzzing. Fae stand around in small groups outside homes and stores chatting animatedly or drinking and staring, transistor radios playing dense rhythmic music. Pigeons and bats whirl in the sky. From time to time, armed groups bundle through intersections. The crowds watch them like foxes frozen by headlights. Occasionally sounds that may or may not be gunshots punctuate the night.
The temptation to find a payphone and call House Red is growing, but Jag remembers Sil’s warning. Sil plotted out a way home. A way to stay safe.
But did Sil plot out all the variables? Something, it is becoming clear, is happening. Jag doesn’t think anybody knows exactly what it is. She’s too scared to stop and ask. The moment, though, is building. The sense is pervading the city that events will be clear soon. And every fae in the Iron City seems to be desperate that no one else figures it out before they do.
“What happened?” they call to Jag. “What happened?” Over and over. “What happened?”
She wants to wipe the dust and dirt away. It draws every eye. But if she does… the green of her skin will be obvious. Then when an eye reaches her, it will be so much worse.
“Hey!” someone shouts to her. A gaggle of sidhe youth preening outside a corner store. “What happened?”
Jag tries not to run.
“Hey! Hey!” Shouts follow her. “Why you so unfriendly?”
She risks a look back. A few sidhe are wandering down the street after her.
Don’t run. Don’t run.<
br />
“What you do?” one says. “You do something? You bring trouble here?”
Don’t run. Don’t.
“You rude.”
“Think we should teach her some manners.”
Jag looks back again. The whole knot of youth has pulled away from the corner store, is following her.
Don’t run. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
Jag tries not to run.
She fails.
Bee
Bee presses himself tightly against the roof tiles. Scents of soot, stale rainwater, and mold fill his nostrils. His chest pistons up and down as he tries to regain his breath. His heart thunders, machine-gun loud.
They’ve been chasing the Red Cap goblins for ten blocks now—first racing to keep them in view, then furtively ducking behind chimneys, A/C units, and water towers, desperate to avoid another gun battle, desperate to not pick up more casualties.
Now, Bee has only a gutter to hide behind.
Tharn lies next to him. Bee wants to check that his friend’s head is back in the game. To make sure he’s mastered his fear, that he’s not a danger to everyone here. But Bee doesn’t dare. He can’t be overheard. The Red Caps are standing in the street almost directly below them.
One of the goblins talks into a radio handset. Bee can’t hear the words, just the tone. It doesn’t seem like anyone involved in the conversation is happy.
The Red Caps start running again. Bee and the others peel themselves off the rooftop and start running too. They try to keep the distance constant, try to stay quiet.
Tonight, the city below has a strange energy. Too many fae are out on the streets. Smoke is rising from factories that should lie quiet. Shouting echoes from faraway avenues and alleyways, distant and hollow. More gunshots than usual reverberate between the buildings. Bee thinks about the other groups sent out to claim the city in the name of revolution.
Twenty-one members of the Fae Liberation Front run across the rooftops of the Iron City now. There were twenty-four at the evening’s start. And Bee knows that revolution is a violent act. He’s read his theory. But what if, he wonders, Tharn was right? What if the revolution is over already? What if they’re already defeated?
The machine gun bounces and clatters against his hip. He both does and doesn’t want to have to use it again.
The goblins turn abruptly left, disappearing through a gap in a tall chain-link and green tarpaulin-covered fence into an empty lot and out of sight. Bee can see a fire escape ahead of them descending down into the space. He holds up a hand. The Fae Liberation Front stumbles to a halt.
“Why’d they go in there?” Harretta is panting hard.
“Am I a mind reader now?” Bee approaches the fire escape with a sense of trepidation, grinds to a halt five yards away.
Harretta knots her brows. “You OK?”
He doesn’t want to say he’s scared. Especially after his big-man act back at the factory. Tharn puts a hand on his shoulder. Perhaps, of all of them, he understands.
Together, they lower themselves, crawl forward. The smell of filthy roof tiles is becoming familiar.
Bee looks down on an undeveloped lot. Tall fences topped with razor wire isolate it. Security cameras peer into adjoining streets. It is an unfriendly space.
Tonight, it has become a little more so.
A series of blood-colored tents obscure the dirt and weeds. Goblins scurry between them, clad in back, eponymous berets clamped in place. There are tables full of guns and ammunition. Some goblins strip weapons, reassemble them; others examine clipboards and point with purpose.
Bee would love to pretend that this is some rich goblin camping expedition. He would love to pretend that it is innocent. He would love to pretend that he stayed back in the smelting factory where he was ordered to stay, or anything else that would mean he’s not perched precariously on the edge of a rooftop peering down on a House Red Cap mobile military command center.
He would love to pretend that Tharn isn’t right, and that the revolution isn’t utterly fucked.
10
Iron Fists and Lead Feet
Granny Spregg
Granny Spregg paces. Her palm throbs. Her hip aches. She wants to stop and rub it with her uninjured hand, but she can’t afford for the command center’s soldiers to see her infirmity. Not tonight.
“Any word?” she says instead.
“None yet.” General Callart answers her as smoothly as if it’s the first time she’s asked.
She sent a tactical unit into the Fae Districts an hour ago. She gave them a very specific address to visit, and very clear directions about what to do when they got there. She had them repeat it all back to her.
Then it was out of her hands. They were out running through the Iron City, and all she could do was stay behind, pacing and aching.
She curls a lip at Callart. It is an unreasonable response to his polite answer. She doesn’t care. She has been too powerful for too long to be reasonable.
She paces. She aches. Then, finally, the door to the command center flies open. A slender sidhe runner sags against the frame, breathing heavily, stared at by everyone.
“A scout,” he manages, still sucking on the air like a vacuum cleaner going through its death throes. “Returned. He’s down—”
“I’ll see him alone.” Granny Spregg cuts the runner off, and cuts the legs out from under the anticipation filling the room. She hobbles away through the deflating atmosphere. Thacker scuttles after her.
The runner leads her down corridors that transition from grandeur to functional to downright shitty. Grunt humor graffitis the walls. “What’s black and white and red all over? I don’t know, but if it’s got tits, I’ll fuck it.” Such, she thinks, is the quality of the soldiers employed by House Spriggan. But if this scout has good news, then she may finally have a chance to improve that quality.
The debriefing room is small and functional, and smells like an abandoned gymnasium. The goblin scout stands beside an orange plastic chair. He hasn’t sat down while waiting. He is one of the good ones. It’s why she picked him for this mission. Just because she hasn’t been in charge, doesn’t mean she hasn’t been paying attention.
“Stand outside,” she tells the sidhe runner. Then when the lackey is gone, she says, “Report.”
“We entered the target location at 2330 hours,” the scout reports. As he does so, Thacker gently drums his fingers against the door. It’s a cheap trick as countermeasures go, but it will at least defeat the runner’s ear, which is certainly pressed to the door’s far side right now.
“Cotter was dead when we got there,” the scout goes on. “There were signs of a violent altercation. We did reconnaissance and found a mercenary group in a bar nearby. After brief observation, their conversation led us to believe they were involved in the Cotter incident. We… cleared the bar, and interrogated them. Their leader—a sidhe called Merrick—took the credit when pressed.”
“Shit.” Granny Spregg is pacing again. Her hand throbs. She takes the goddamn chair herself, easing creaking bones into its meager comforts. “What about the package?”
It has not escaped her notice that the scout is empty-handed.
“Missing. The mercenaries didn’t have it either. Someone took it before they arrived, they claim. Another player. They didn’t know who. Neither do we.”
“Fuck!” Granny Spregg wants a table to flip. “Fuck.” She says it again, trying to think. “OK… OK… So, Cotter orders the Dust from beyond the Iron Wall. It comes in. We hear about it. But someone else does too. They send mercenaries to steal it. I send you. But one more player gets there first. Before the mercenaries. Before you.” She looks up at the scout. “And I don’t have my Dust.”
“No, ma’am.” The scout meets her gaze. This, he knows, is not his fault.
“You’re attempting to track down the thief.” It’s not a question.
He nods anyway.
“Fuck.” Spoken a third time, like an incantation. “D
o you know who sent the mercenaries?”
“A kobold. A local civic leader—” But she’s already waving off the answer. If this kobold doesn’t have her Dust, he doesn’t matter. She needs the Dust. It is the sun around which her plans orbit. It is the match with which she will light a fuse.
She cannot march to war on the strength of empty hands.
She must fill them with something.
She looks around the room. What is to hand?
Thacker meets her gaze. She smiles at him. “Call the runner back in,” she tells him.
Thacker blinks.
“Did I stutter?”
The runner has a politely curious expression on his face as Thacker ushers him in. He is burning to know what is happening, she knows, burning to have gossip to share with his peers, or to sell to a tabloid, or to some other House.
“Close the door, Thacker,” she says.
She can feel the sidhe’s anticipation building. Granny Spregg turns her back on him.
“I need you,” she says, speaking to the scout instead, “to carve out his heart.”
“Ma’am?”
She meets his gaze. This will be thin grounds for her plans, but desperate times…
She nods. The scout’s hesitation is only momentary. “Ma’am.”
“What?” the runner manages.
Then the scout is on him. An elbow to his face, snapping the cheekbone, the eyeball sagging. The runner clutches at the wound, screaming. He’s not trained for this. He’s left his belly exposed.
Thacker glances anxiously at the door. Still, such sounds are not entirely out of place down here. Interrogations often go awry in House Spriggan. So much of success, Granny Spregg has found, depends on a refusal to lose one’s nerve.
The scout unsheathes his sword and disembowels the sidhe in a single stroke. The smells of blood, bile, and shit fill the room, as the runner collapses. The scout slits the runner’s throat just to make sure. Thacker scuttles into a corner trying to keep the gore from washing onto his shoes, a look of violent distaste on his prissy features.
The scout goes about his work. There’s an efficiency to his butchery. Quick strokes in and out. Nothing misplaced. When he presents Granny Spregg with the heart, his arms are red to the elbow.