City of Iron and Dust

by J. P. Oakes

  Now, he looks down at Skart. It went worse for the old kobold. Stupid bastard, getting himself killed.

  There’s nothing Knull can do about that, though. He cannot make anything better. So, slowly Knull starts to drag himself towards the alley’s exit.

  Behind him, Skart groans.

  Knull stops. Skart groans again.

  So, not dead yet.

  But… soon.

  Surely.

  Knull takes another step. Skart coughs—wet and followed by a mewl of pain.

  Knull tells himself he doesn’t owe Skart anything.

  Except the old kobold did drop the pistol into Knull’s lap. He did throw himself in front of the Spriggan’s gun. He did beat the commandos to the floor.

  Knull didn’t ask him to, though.

  But…

  Knull hobbles back to Skart. There is a small black hole in the kobold’s stomach. It wells with blood. Skart’s ruddy face is knotted in pain.

  He’ll be dead soon. There’s nothing Knull can do. Knull’s too beaten and too bruised to help. It’s too much to ask. It’s… It’s…

  “Factory,” Skart gasps. “On Steel and Main… fae there… heal me…” He takes a long, shuddering breath.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Knull wants to howl it. He wants to run from here screaming the word into the night. He wants to curl up, and hurt, and heal, and forget that Skart ever existed. He wants to find someone who will pay him for his Dust, so he can live somewhere beautiful and wonderful, and so very far away from all this shit.

  He doesn’t owe Skart anything. He repeats the words over and over and over in his head.

  Cursing all the way, Knull bends down. Cursing all the way, he heaves Skart up onto his shoulder. His ankle screams, and he whispers obscenities back at it. Then, staggering, spitting, and still cursing as he goes, he carries the kobold out of the alley and away towards a factory on Steel and Main.

  Bee

  Bee and the Fae Liberation Front descend into the gun-smoke haze of the abandoned lot. The goblins lie splayed on the floor, some looking peaceful, eyes closed, only a single black hole telling the truth of their slumber. Others dissemble less and have been disassembled more. They end abruptly. Limbs lie severed from torsos. Fist-sized holes mark meaty exit wounds. The whole place stinks of gunpowder and copper.

  Bee takes tentative steps. He doesn’t want to step in the blood or tangle his feet in a loop of intestine.

  Behind him, Tharn descends one-handed, cussing a storm. They’ve bandaged his shoulder as best they can, but the wrappings are already the same color as the goblins’ hats.

  “You OK?” Tharn asks when he stands beside Bee.

  Bee thinks about that. He’d wanted to come out and knock some heads. That’s what he’d said. Now, he still feels sick.

  “No,” he says.

  “We should look for papers,” Harretta is telling the others. “Anything that shows why the goblins are here.”

  Some eyes flick to Bee. “Aye,” he says, as if it’s a vote. “You OK?” he asks Tharn as they start splitting off into groups.

  “Well, it feels like there’s a fire brand in my shoulder,” Tharn says. “So…”

  “So, someone finally pulled it out of your ass then?”

  Laughing makes it a little better.

  “Should you go back?” Bee asks him more seriously. “You wanted to warn people about what’s going on. Maybe this is the time. You can have that shoulder seen to properly there.”

  Tharn shakes his head. “We made a decision. As a collective. To stick together. To not weaken the group.”

  “Like you’re adding strength,” Bee says, and Tharn makes an obscene gesture with his hand.

  Finding a little more laughter in the night, they push back a tent flap and enter a small dark space, lit only by the holes their barrage tore through the fabric ceiling. There’s a table in the center. Papers are scattered over it. A goblin is scattered over them.

  They can’t read anything in the dark, gore-splattered tent. They take the papers out into the lot, try to make typewritten text out through the crimson smears.

  “Shit,” Bee says.

  “What?” Tharn is holding a sheet of paper up to the glow of a streetlight.

  “What do you have?” Bee asks instead.

  “Requisition form,” Tharn says, squinting. “Ammunition, and… shit, they brought a lot of grenades.”

  “Hmm,” Bee says. “Well, I have radio codes for thirty-five groups of House Red Cap commandos sent to the Fae Districts tonight,” Bee says.

  Tharn lowers his sheet of paper. “How many?”

  Bee can see from Tharn’s expression that his own must be suitably grim.

  They call the others to them. Soon, grim becomes a unifying look for the Fae Liberation Front.

  “OK,” Tharn says when they’re all appraised. “Now, we have to let the others know.”

  Harretta shakes her head. “Now,” she says, “speed is more important than ever before. We must press our advantage before they know we’ve found them out.”

  Bee looks up to the roof edge above. “We left three more friends up there.”

  “To the vote?” Harretta asks, speaking as if he hadn’t.

  “No debate?” Tharn asks sharply.

  “There’s no time,” she replies.

  Bee looks at Harretta. There still isn’t anything bloodthirsty on her face.

  Tharn, apparently, isn’t going to let this go, though. “Do you seek leadership?” he asks.

  And those, in the Fae Liberation Front, are what pass for fighting words.

  “What did you just ask me?” Harretta’s pale blue skin mottles purple—her sidhe regality mixed with punkish anger.

  “You know we have to discuss a motion,” Bee tries to say.

  “Did I not ask for a vote?” Harretta’s fists are balled.

  “You attempted to bully a result,” Tharn insists.

  Their voices rise. Everything around Bee smells of blood. He has been swallowed by the glory and the horror of the fight.

  “—coward—” Harretta says.

  “—demagogue—” Tharn spits back.

  Glory and horror. Aggression and caution. The whole world split into dichotomies. Fae and goblin.

  Old arguments. New arguments all around him. But Bee finally thinks he knows whose side he’s on. He remembers why he was excited for this fight.

  “Quiet!” he snaps.

  They both stop, stare at him. At his audacity.

  “This,” he tells them, “is not what we do. This,” he tells all the gathered fae, “is not what I do. I don’t command. I don’t lead. None of us do. We are a collective. We debate. And that does not mean screaming hate into each other’s faces. It doesn’t mean accusing. Because we don’t do that. We’re the Fae Liberation Front. We’re about fucking liberation. From a mindset. From an outlook. We fight for a future unshackled from artificial binaries. We knock heads so we can heal minds. So what—” He stares at both Tharn and Harretta. “—the fuck is all this?”

  And he doesn’t expect shame. They’re all too angry for that. But he does want them to listen. That’s all he’s ever wanted. A voice. And that’s what he’s here to fight for in the Iron City tonight.

  “Now,” he says, “a position has been put forward: to pursue these goblins and value speed over reinforcements. Tharn offers a counterargument: to tell the uprising’s leadership. I have a third path: we split the group, sending one back as a messenger, while the rest of us pursue. Who else has something to add?”

  Silence. For a moment it’s all silence, and just the sullen stares of Tharn and Harretta in the middle of it all, and he thinks it was for nothing. But then Chow, a stout pixie with a blood-soaked bandana on her forehead, the red stark against her orange skin, says, “What’s changed since the factory? How can we afford to thin our numbers now by sending messengers back if we couldn’t then?”

  “And we can’t send only one back
,” says Ashette, a coal-black kobold-pixie with hair the color of a sunset. “It’s too dangerous. It would have to be three at least.”

  And that’s it. There. Voices expanding on an idea. Riffing on it. Evolving it. Imperfect, inelegant, perhaps impossible. But seeking for something better. And that idea is what binds the Fae Liberation Front together. That is why they fight.

  Two minutes later, and Bee says, “To the vote.”

  They vote again to go on together, as one. They are in this together. They are scared to send back a small group, finding safety in numbers. They all have their own different reasons, and they don’t all agree, but when the vote is cast none of them question the result.

  Harretta smiles. Tharn fingers his gun nervously. But neither won or lost as far as Bee is concerned. It’s the process that matters to him, not the result. And, to him, this finally feels like a victory.

  Sil

  Sil is spinning. Every battle feels like it ends in disaster. Jag is nowhere she looks for her. The Iron City is a labyrinth, and she simply cannot walk any further.

  She knows she should know what to do. Questions were removed from her life a long time ago. If this, then this is the truth of her existence. Except losing Jag was never a variable she was allowed to contemplate.

  After a while, she walks forward again. She has to. It’s the only course of action she can think to take. She’s lost her sense of direction, though. Her gaze bounces off street names, reads letters that never coalesce into words.

  She wanders. She stops. She spins.

  This part of the city is quieter, she thinks. The violence that possesses the other parts of the Fae Districts hasn’t infected these streets yet.

  If the streets are quiet, then… what?

  She walks forward again. Or is she going backwards? Has she been here before?

  The crackle of a radio interrupts her. It comes from a doorway, an apartment complex service entrance. She stops. Could it be Jag?

  But Jag has no radio.

  “—sit rep. Oscar-crimson-five reporting—”

  And somewhere in her scrambling mind, she finds a tiny pane of clarity through which she can stare. Oscar-crimson-five is a House Red Cap call sign. It’s one of their commando groups.

  Osmondo has found her.

  For a moment, the urge to flee flares in her, almost overpowering. The only thing that holds her still is her shock at its existence. It is as if she has wandered into a familiar garden to find a weed towering over her, something massive and terrifying.

  She backs away from her own urges and into the commandos’ arms. She has stopped knowing herself.

  They are crouched in the corridor-like space between two buildings—twelve of them in a tight oval. Their commander has a flashlight pointed at a map. They all look up.

  “Asset Sil reporting in,” she says. The words are automatic. There is comfort in that. She knows what to say.

  The commander’s eyes widen. He looks from her to his troops. “Asset Sil,” he repeats.

  She nods. She is well-known in House Red. There is no point dissembling.

  He licks his lips. “And what is Princess Jaggered’s status?”

  “Princess Jaggered…” She hesitates over the words. All calm departs. Again, she feels the urge to flee along with it. “She’s in the wind,” she manages.

  The commander blinks. “She’s not secure?”

  Sil’s breath is tight in her lungs. She wants to punch someone. “I confirm this.” It feels like asking for the gun to be placed against her temple.

  The commander nods slowly. He lifts the radio to his lips, lowers it, then raises it again. “Oscar-crimson-five,” he says, “Operation Winnow update. Asset Sil has reported in. Jaggered is in the wind. Repeat, asset Sil and Jaggered are separated and Jaggered is in the wind.”

  The static that follows fills Sil’s skull. It echoes.

  “Red base confirms Oscar-crimson-five.” The radio spits out the hissing words. “Asset Sil in your possession. Operation Winnow proceeding as planned. Bring her home.”

  Signal and noise. And there is so much noise in Sil’s head. And yet, there is something in that message. Something that snags at the ragged edges of her mind.

  A cut fan belt. A plot within House Red…

  The commander stands. He extends a hand. “Time to come in, asset Sil.”

  He smiles.

  That, Sil thinks, is his mistake. Because none of this—proceeding as planned; Operation Winnow—is the reaction of a house thrown into chaos by the loss of its daughter and heir.

  And so…

  If they’re not worried by Jag’s loss…

  If this is what they anticipated…

  …then these goblins are a threat to Jag.

  Finally, Sil knows exactly what to do.

  The commander is a good soldier. He’s been slowly signaling his team to surround her. She sees him realize what’s going to happen in the moment before she moves.

  He goes for his gun. She drops to the floor as he snaps off the shot. The bullet that would have caught her in the gut sears a path through the air above her head, slams into the knee of the commando directly behind her, sends him spinning away like a bowling pin.

  Sil rolls, comes up and draws her sword in the same motion. She brings it up into the crotch of one of the other commandos. He howls, collapsing around his collapsed anatomy. She stretches out her smile. She brings the shock and awe.

  The second shot is fired past her right hip. She pirouettes left, snaps out the blade. Her target catches the blow on his armored shoulder rather than in his neck. She keeps on moving, though, her stride not faltering as she lets the blade scrape up towards the goblin’s cheek. He stumbles back, she extends a leg, sends him sprawling.

  The building walls press close; it is a small, tight space. It’s not good for gun play. She smiles wider.

  One of the commandos figures it out faster than the others. The butt of his gun catches her in the side of her abdomen. Her body snaps around the blow, trying to flow with it as much as she can. Her sword swings wildly, and she feels a tug on the tip. She hears a scream. Good.

  Another commando kicks out. She catches his foot, drags him toward her, sword at his throat.

  A moment of pause. She has a hostage. But still the gun barrels start to come up.

  She flicks the sword tip against her captive’s artery. Blood makes a monochromatic rainbow, flies everywhere. She drops, as around her commandos blink and splutter. Guns go off. Something catches her in the shoulder. She grunts, keeps hold of her sword, keeps pushing.

  Crouched low, she stabs out again, again, again, again. She aims for gaps between armored plates, skewers guts and punctures organs.

  Another rifle butt, this one to the back of the head. There’s no riding it out, as it sends her to the floor. A foot crunches down against her ankle, grinds against the bone.

  “They said you’d make it difficult.” She recognizes the commander’s voice. It makes her think less of him. He should know better than to gloat. He should know better than to let her know exactly where his foot is. She flicks the blade back. There is a meaty thwack; the commander howls.

  He flails away. Her ankle released, she flips forward, comes clear off the ground. Bullets chase her arc through the air, but they’re already too late. She skewers the commander through his open mouth.

  Two are left. One on either side of her. They stare. Her sword is stuck somewhere between their commander’s upper vertebrae. He has a pistol in a hip holster, though. She snatches it out, snaps off a shot to the left, brings it over to the right.

  She’s gotten cocky. She’s taken too much pleasure in knowing precisely what she has to do. She hasn’t shifted her weight enough. She has presented too much of a target.

  The final commando’s rifle goes off. One shot in the shin. The second into the meat of her thigh. The rest of the burst goes past her hip.

  She fires as she falls, catches her last opponent below the jaw, tak
es off the top his skull like she’s opening a can.

  Then she hits the floor. And then she and the fight are all done.

  13

  That’s Another Fine Mess You’ve Gotten Me Into

  Granny Spregg

  There are many things Granny Spregg would like to see upon waking. Her children in chains and begging forgiveness. The eviscerated corpse of Osmondo Red. Several swarthy members of House Troll with a serious aversion to clothing. Thacker, however, is not one of these things.

  Thacker hovers over her, hands fluttering like spasming butterflies.

  She turns from him, hawks and coughs. Her phlegm is pink as it hits the pillow.

  “Get me up,” she growls.

  He has carried her to her bed. He props her up now, plumps pillows at her back.

  Granny Spregg examines her hands. Between the knotted knuckles and thick twists of veins a purple stain is spreading up her forearm.

  “It seems,” she says, “that our antidote has only delayed the inevitable.”

  Thacker almost shits himself. “I’ll… I’ll…” he stutters.

  “You’ll not forget what is on the line,” she tells him. “There is a quantity of Dust in this city capable of turning me into an all-singing, all-dancing gymnast who floats through the air farting golden fae skulls. Poison is nothing. Time is everything. How long was I out?”

  Thacker swallows. “I wasn’t… I didn’t… I wasn’t sure if you’d wake up. I didn’t look.”

  She grabs him by the lapel with one poison-stained hand. “Guess.”

  “Ten… ten minutes?”

  “Then, Thacker, we are on the verge of being late for our appointment with the other Houses.”

  Thacker’s eyes almost fall out of his skull. “But…”

  “The plan, Thacker,” she tells him. “The plan solves everything.”

  “…you’re dying.” Thacker seems to think this is new information. “So are you,” she snaps back. “I’m just doing it faster. Now get my ballgown out and fetch the car. Quickly.”

  Knull

  What, in the name of every hell there is, Knull would like to know, does Skart eat?