City of Iron and Dust

by J. P. Oakes

  “What was it about his work that first struck you?”

  Edwyll spins round. Somehow Lila has separated him from Jag, has the goblin by the arm and is leaning in conspiratorially. He senses danger, tries to get closer.

  Jag smiles at Lila. “The message,” she says, not missing a beat. “It was just so clear. This vision of the future. So bold and bright, and so in defiance of the status quo. It was inspiring.” Another smile. “I was inspired.”

  Edwyll edges closer to them. Talluck is shouting at Jallow to get them drinks now, damn it. Threm is staring at them through his viewfinder. Jag links her arm with his, pulls him close. Threm puts the camera down, chews his lip.

  “I want him to do something political,” she says. “Something big, and disruptive.”

  “Something that will make fae stop and pay attention,” Edwyll says. There’s a sense of wonder in his voice, he hears. But everything in the room has stopped feeling expected. Because what she’s suddenly talking about, this work she is fucking commissioning in front of everyone, is exactly what he wanted to create. It is as if they have somehow tuned into the same channel, are repeating lines from the same script.

  “Here you go.” Jallow has brought the drinks. They clink glasses.

  Talluck says, “To Edwyll!” and for just a moment all the horror outside is forgotten and Edwyll feels like the center of the world.

  And then Lila sighs, and asks, “How is it out there?”

  The good feeling drains away. The splatter splash of guts and gun blasts plays out across the theater of Edwyll’s mind.

  “Bad and getting worse.” Jag speaks before Edwyll can recover. He is struck by how unfazed she seems talking to these artists. How here, in a tight room, with the city shut away behind doors and walls, her nervousness is gone. He wonders exactly what sort of fish he has landed here.

  “Well—” Threm sits back on the couch, massages his camera. “—it’ll be worse tomorrow. When your…” He stares at Jag and trails off.

  But Jag nods. “It’s OK,” she says. “You’re right. And it will be exactly as wrong as you believe it to be. This uprising is a natural consequence of…” She hesitates. “…how the Houses—my House—treats you,” she says finally.

  Threm’s eyebrows go up. Jag looks slightly shocked at her own words.

  “We want to make a statement.” Edwyll can’t help himself. And it is not quite a lie, he thinks. Because she said she wanted him to create something political. And he feels convinced suddenly that they do want to create the same thing. He feels confident bringing her into the vision that is forming in his eye of the piece he will create. Something like his mural, but bigger, grander, more refined. The metaphor clearer… “We want to create something,” he says, “that can help disrupt the cycles of violence.”

  “Now that,” Lila says, “is something I can drink to.”

  They sit around Jallow’s coffee table. Drinks are raised, and blessings bestowed. The bottle’s golden contents burn pleasantly all the way from Edwyll’s tongue to his toes. The others demand details of the first time Jag saw his graffiti, how she tracked him down. And with each lie they tell, Edwyll’s heart calms a little. They are natural collaborators, he finds, feeding off each other, creating a myth of their past.

  “And what was it about the piece that spoke to you?” Lila asks as they bring the story to the night’s mural.

  Jag blinks, looks to Edwyll. “I just…” She shakes her head. “All my life I have been told what the Iron City is. Who I am in it. Who the fae are. They’ve told me all this history, and how this is the only logical conclusion. And it’s never felt right to me. It’s never felt true. And when I looked at Edwyll’s art, I just… I finally saw someone who could take that feeling out of my heart and put it on a canvas.”

  Edwyll thinks he is going to explode.

  “We need more goblins who think like you,” Talluck—still sitting and toying with one of his figures—rumbles to life.

  Threm, tugging on the camera around his neck, looks sour. “Goblins like Jag here are as rare as unicorns. All the rest are still caught in old enmities.”

  Edwyll feels unexpectedly defensive. “Well,” he says, “the same can be said for many fae as well.”

  Talluck and Jallow both nod.

  Threm snorts. “I don’t see any goblin artists begging and scraping for fae patronage,” he says. “Given the power differentials in the Iron City, I find it easier to understand why the fae hold onto their grudges.”

  All eyes shift to Jag. The silence is an awkward one.

  “No,” she says. “No, Threm’s right. The goblins have no reason to oppress any more, but they—we—persist.”

  The whole room’s attention is fixed on her.

  “Look,” she says, “I’ve been outside. I’ve seen what’s happening. It’s a riot. It’s the unheard of this city shouting. Some of the fae have been pushed over the edge by the goblins. And tomorrow—brutally, unfairly—we know there will be reprisals, and more fae will suffer. Not just those out there pushed to the brink, but all fae, normal fae.

  “It’s a cycle. It repeats. The goblins push, the fae break, the goblin use it as an excuse to push harder. It needs to stop. But every time it’s the minority speaking the loudest. On both sides, the extremists break first. Everyone else out there—all those like Edwyll, and me, and you—who aspire to a better world through non-violent means are being drowned out. Because they’re given no vehicle to speak. They’re given no banner to unite behind. So, it all just repeats. It becomes its own self-fulfilling reason to oppress. History caught in a loop. No one ever moving on, just staring back at a war most of us never even lived through. Caught within the Iron Walls.”

  She’s spilled her drink. She realizes everybody is looking at her. Edwyll is staring at her.

  “Well,” Talluck says, finally standing. “Hear fucking hear.” He laughs.

  Jallow raises his glass, and Lila and Talluck join in. Jag is blushing, and rubbing the back of her neck. Threm still worries at his camera.

  Edwyll is still staring. He sees Jag in the room, sees all of them, sees all the art and inspiration and love they have made in this place, this space—but he sees beyond it too. He sees a tree blooming over them all. Protecting. Guiding their eyes to the skies.

  “No banner,” he says slowly and to himself. “No banner to unite behind.”

  “What?” Lila leans forward from her seat on the couch.

  “Jag said it,” Edwyll says. “She said there’s no banner for the fae to unite behind. They’re all out there, in the streets right now, running for cover, none of them knowing where they can go. It’s chaos. Because no one’s bringing them together. No one is giving them a banner to unite behind.”

  “Oh…” Jag looks embarrassed. “It’s… just an expression.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be.” He puts a hand on her arm. “We could give them a banner. A sign. Something so they know they’re not alone.” He’s babbling a little, the words rushing out of him in a flood. “Something to show them where they can be safe. Where they can come together. Where they can unite.” He feels the sense of wonder again. “A symbol to ignite a movement. To break free.”

  She’s staring at him, eyes wide.

  “Yes,” Talluck rumbles again. The big drome picks himself up, starts pacing back and forth, nodding to himself. “Yes,” he says again. “Art as political movement. Political movement as art. A marriage of the two. The movement as the symbol, the symbol as a voice.”

  “Here he goes,” Threm mutters, “as if House-unsanctioned art gets any play.” But Lila just laughs as Jallow rolls his eyes at both of them.

  But Edwyll is caught by Talluck’s enthusiasm. By his words. “A symbol,” he repeats.

  Jag is still staring at him. “A tree,” she says.

  And then Edwyll sees. He sees how everything he’s been trying to accomplish with his art, his symbology, his politics can be achieved.

  “A white tree,�
�� he says. “The symbol of the fae redefined as a banner of unity.”

  Jag nods. “Breaking free of the past.”

  Granny Spregg

  The Hall of Horns has never been a welcoming space. It is, after all, an architectural testament to slaughter, and the tearing away of all that is precious; a marker of a victory devoid of joy or glory. It is what it was designed to be: the true heart of the Iron City.

  The heads of seven white harts hang upon its oak-paneled walls. At the consecration of this city, the masters of the five Houses slaughtered a stag apiece and hung their prizes here. Mab cut the other two heads free herself—two because she is better than all of them, and because she wanted to make sure they never forgot. Now, the harts’ glass eyes reflect the low chandeliers’ light and stare down at the assembled crowd that stares in turn at Granny Spregg.

  Osmondo Red is there, of course, smiling cruelly to himself. Guntra Trog of House Troll too, dressed in a ballgown that probably plays host to a small circus when she doesn’t need it. Ethrek Hobgob, small and sour as a lemon, looks almost as shriveled as Granny Spregg despite the fact that she is half her age. And Jeremark Bogle lurks around the edges, fingers steepled, feet always moving, head weaving sinuously from side to side.

  “Ah,” Granny Spregg breathes as she enters. “My daughter’s peers.”

  Ethrek Hobgob’s sour face crumples even further. Granny Spregg isn’t entirely sure how she manages it. “Brethelda doesn’t even deign to meet with us herself?” she asks. “Instead, she sends her elderly and—” She touches her eye. “—clumsy mother?”

  Granny Spregg just smiles. There is never any pleasing Ethrek so she normally finds it easier to just keep pissing her off. “My daughter,” she says, “is as inscrutable as ever. All I can tell you is that I am here.” She winks with the eye that is already swelling from Osmondo’s punch.

  “Go fuck yourself.” Guntra Trog is direct at least. Granny Spregg has always liked her the most of this new brood of city leaders.

  “Maybe later,” she replies, and Guntra tries to suppress a smile.

  “So,” Ethrek presses, “you offer no explanation for Brethelda’s refusal to obey our summons?”

  Granny Spregg merely shrugs. “I could offer many explanations, Ethrek. I could tell you that her latest partner has lost the keys to the chains she used to tie Brethelda to the bed last night. I could tell you that she is as likely to answer your summons as she is to shit a live turtle. I could tell you—”

  “So many words.” Osmondo Red leans forward, mouth twisted. “And yet so little to say.”

  Granny Spregg resents that. She’d just been getting into her stride. Still, she smiles beatifically at him. “So much meaning to go over your head, Osmondo.”

  “You are here,” Osmondo goes on, “to answer for House Spriggan, to defend it and its actions.”

  “Does House Spriggan answer to you?”

  Osmondo Red smiles a wide smile. “It may.”

  Granny Spregg looks to the others. “And what about House Hobgob? House Troll? Are we all accountable to each other now? Must we ask each other’s permission to do our business? Must Jeremark ask permission to buy, and sell, and charge commission in his counting houses? Must Guntra submit a form before she drills another mine? What about you, Ethrek? Do you want to kowtow to all others before you put your next building up? Is that the freedom we won in the Iron War?”

  Osmondo Red growls, but Guntra Trog speaks over him. “None answers to another. Not in this chamber. Not in this city. Not except to Mab.”

  But Mab is far to the North, too preoccupied with her own apotheosis to worry what happens down here amongst the mortals she has left behind. And they all know it.

  “However,” Ethrek Hobgob says, “we must all live together. The Iron Wall encircles us all, after all. When one House endangers the others, we must look to our own interests. We must question if House Spriggan’s independence is to our best interests.”

  “Endangers?” Granny Spregg arranges her features in an incredulous expression. “And what is it exactly that House Hobgob fears?” She leans just a little on the last word, looks at the others, sees if anyone else will swallow the bait she’s flinging indiscriminately around the room.

  Ethrek sighs like the schoolmarm she was always meant to be. “You attempt to equate precaution with weakness, Bedlack. I will not rise to your jibes.”

  Others, it seems, are willing to swallow the bait whole.

  “She attempts,” Osmondo says, taking another step toward her, “to weasel her way out of the shit her daughter has pulled. And I won’t stand for it.”

  “Brethelda?” Granny Spregg arches an eyebrow. “What has my daughter done?”

  That throws them. Just a little. Enough to make them hesitate in their eagerness to cram their own power down her throat.

  In the silence, Jeremark Bogle finally sidles forward. “Really?” he asks. “Really? You pretend to not know your own House has marched troops into the Fae Districts, that it stirs them into an uprising? Are you that far removed from power now?”

  And now Granny Spregg is fighting to hold the smile back, because it really is all going so well. “Oh no,” she says, “I know all about that. I’m just not sure what you think Brethelda had to do with it.”

  And the pause in the room is longer this time and accompanied by an exchange of glances. Granny Spregg plays it out as long as she dares. “Let me be clear,” she says, finally. “Brethelda had nothing to do with it.”

  If Ethrek Hobgob purses her lips any harder, Granny Spregg thinks, she is likely to turn her face inside out.

  Osmondo recovers first. He always could spot an opening. And Granny Spregg has, in the end, just split her House’s defenses wide apart.

  “So,” he says, leaning in, “you are telling us Brethelda has lost control? You are telling us that House Spriggan is steered by the winds of whatever upstart seizes control? You are telling us that someone needs to step in and take control?”

  He is smiling. The poor bastard really thinks he has her.

  “No, Osmondo,” she says quite calmly. “As ever, you misunderstand. I am telling you that I am here. I am telling you that you are dealing with me. I sent in those troops. And if you assume that this was all some overreach on my part, some foolish error, then I shall relish the opportunity to chop your dick off.”

  And now, the fist of House Spriggan starts to close. And there Osmondo Red stands, right in its palm.

  “You think my House exposed,” she tells him. “You think our troops scattered. You think you have an excuse to step in. You think this is all in error. But it is to my design, Osmondo. This meeting here. Your attendance. Understand that, Osmondo, and get ready to bend your ancient fucking knees.”

  Her breath is coming a little hard. Her pulse is racing, and she can almost feel the purple stain crawling up her arm, polluting her veins, scratching away at her mortality. And yet she has not felt this alive in years.

  Osmondo Red stares at her, bares his teeth. Guntra cocks her head to one side, her smile gone now. Ethrek Hobgob licks her tight lips with a dagger of a tongue, and Jeremark Bogle worries his slender hands.

  “You ask me to explain my actions?” she says to them. “If any of you were worthy of your titles, you would have already asked yourself, why might House Spriggan expose itself this way? Why might it take this risk?” She looks into their dumb cow faces one by one.

  “Why?” Guntra rumbles slowly.

  “I have recovered from the Fae Districts a weapon they intended to use against us,” she tells them.

  “A weapon?” Jeremark darts his head forward at the word.

  “Dust,” she says. “So much Dust that a fae willing to take it could wipe the Iron City from the face of the world. So much Dust that they could scrape the goblins from existence like scraping mud from their shoe. Enough Dust to end us all. And I have saved you from it. You are welcome.”

  She pushes on, doesn’t give them a chance to proc
ess what she’s saying.

  “But now it is mine. This Dust. This weapon. This power that could wipe out all the Houses of the Iron City. Or…” She pauses. She has to pause. This is what it has all been for. This moment. “Or,” she says again, “just four of them.”

  It has been months in the planning. And she has had to crawl, and bow, and scrape, and she has feared that it would not work, that it could never work, but now the looks on their faces make it all worthwhile.

  All she needs now is the actual Dust.

  “It’d kill you to take that much,” Guntra says.

  But it’s all just posturing now. Granny Spregg can smell their fear. Jeremark Bogle looks even more manic than usual, his whole body swaying. Ethrek is gnawing at her lower lip. Guntra’s knuckles are white as she clenches her fists.

  Osmondo, though… Osmondo… she can’t tell.

  “You have this Dust?” he asks. He speaks slowly.

  And this is the knife blade she must walk along without slipping.

  “Would I have come here if I didn’t?”

  Then she waits, trying to prepare her next parry, the next veil of diffusion and confusion. But then Osmondo just nods curtly back, turns away, and stalks toward the door.

  She stares as he goes. They all do.

  “Osmondo!” Ethrek calls out, but he doesn’t turn back, just lets the door slam behind him. “Osmondo!” Ethrek calls again pointlessly.

  It takes Granny Spregg a moment, but then it hits her. This is a retreat. This is Osmondo yielding the field of battle.

  She looks around the room. She can see it in all their eyes.

  She’s won.

  14

  Of Romance and Rage

  Knull

  “You OK?”

  Knull looks up, blinks, feeling heavy-lidded. One of the pixie healers from earlier is standing over him, the one who held Skart’s head, twisting chunky wooden rings around slender fingers. She’s young for a healer, he thinks. Not much older than him, somewhere in her early twenties. That magic is complicated, and it’s hard to learn when you’re dependent on a drug to perform your craft. Right now, she looks as tired as he feels.