City of Iron and Dust

by J. P. Oakes

  Brethelda looks down at her. “It seems,” she says, “that Osmondo Red left here in a state of distress.”

  Granny Spregg isn’t up to doing much more than exhaling. It has been years since she took Dust. She didn’t expect the toll to be this great.

  Brethelda crosses to the sack of powdered sugar still on the table in the center of the room. “Let me see how much of this I have figured out.” She taps the bag with one finger. “You smuggled a mother lode of Dust into the city. You lost it. You sent commandos into the Fae Districts to recover it. You were found out, but tonight’s fae rebellions saved you. You sent in more troops, but you still didn’t find the Dust. The other Houses found out. I sent you to talk peace, but you told them you have the Dust. Osmondo Red called bullshit. You pulled this stunt to deceive him.”

  She turns back to Granny Spregg, considers. “No,” she says. “That’s not quite it, is it?” She leans in, examines Granny Spregg’s face. “But I’m close.”

  Granny Spregg takes a few breaths. She never did enjoy being clever when there was no one around to appreciate it.

  “I would have Thacker bring tea to Callart in the operations center,” she manages. “He would smuggle out as much intelligence as he could glean. Bring it to me. I picked up on a report that—” A ragged breath. “That Privett missed.”

  “Osmondo Red.” She smiles. “He’s the one. Our agents picked up the chatter months ago. He’d arranged for an agent to smuggle it in. That’s why I needed the troops, why I needed to usurp Privett. I needed a division of soldiers to steal it from Osmondo. But someone else got there first.” She permits herself a blood-stained smile, as much to take a break from talking as anything else. “That was my only mistake. Everything else—” She locks eyes with Brethelda. “—was to my design. I wanted to be found out. I wanted you to send in more troops. I wanted to be sent to talk to the other House heads. I just…” She takes a long breath. “I was just meant to have the Dust when I went. Make those fuckers kneel.”

  Brethelda isn’t focusing on the important parts. She isn’t applauding her mother’s brilliance. “Osmondo Red smuggled thirty-eight pounds of Dust into this city. What was he planning?”

  Granny Spregg doesn’t have the energy to shrug. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  Brethelda’s frown deepens. “And what about you, Mother? What did you hope to gain? Because… well.” Another shake of the head. “Look at you.”

  “This,” Granny Spregg says through gritted teeth. “Is. My. House.” She spits a wad of blood onto the floor.

  Brethelda closes her eyes. “Oh, Mother.” And for a moment her sadness looks genuine. “You are the past, Mother. You are history. You have to let the world move on without you.”

  “Never.”

  And she won’t. Not while there is breath left in her body. She tries to get to her feet. Her cane scratches against the floor. Her knees tremble. She doesn’t rise, but she keeps on fighting anyway.

  “Please, Mother. Stop.” But Granny Spregg doesn’t. She never will. “You’re bleeding again.”

  Granny Spregg puts her hands on the table, tries to stand. Her wrists buckle. She sprawls down, finally losing her fight with gravity, spilling onto the floor in a puddle of stick limbs and stiff cotton.

  Brethelda turns away, opens the door. Two large House Spriggan guards are waiting outside. “My mother is infirm in body and mind,” she tells them. “Carry her back to her room and put her to her bed. Remove all the sharp objects you find. Lock the door when you leave and stand guard. I will attend to her as soon as I can consult a doctor. However, for now she has lit fires that I need to put out.”

  “Fuck you,” Granny Spregg says from the floor.

  The two guards pay her insults no heed. They hoist her up by her shoulders and her ankles and carry her across the room.

  “Give up, Mother,” Brethelda says. “For your own sake. You have no allies and no power left. It is time to rest. I shall ensure that House Spriggan recovers the Dust. I shall ensure that House Spriggan reaps all its benefits. But also know that you will never see a single grain of it.”

  She comes close. She places a hand against her mother’s bloody cheek.

  “This,” she says, “is defeat.”

  Edwyll

  Everyone in the collective’s rowhouse has gone still. Edwyll is still standing over Threm, fists balled. Threm and Talluck are still sitting back on the floor. Jag is still on all fours. Jallow and Lila are still pressed to the musty carpet.

  Every eye has gone to the door. Every ear is tuned to the sound of cracking wood. Then come the tramping footsteps, numerous, coming at speed. Talluck rises, massive, lip curled. Jag starts to scramble toward Edwyll, Threm curls into a ball.

  Goblins hurtle through the doorway. Four goblins with guns and yellow bands around arms and scalps—House Spriggan, Edwyll thinks. But that doesn’t make sense, because didn’t Threm say Jag was House Red’s heir? But there is no time to figure out the inconsistency because four goblins are shouting and screaming at them all to get down, to get back, to get on the floor, to show them their hands. Goblins who hit Talluck in the gut with the butt of a gun and double him over.

  Edwyll wants to scream. Wants to scream and scream. He is trying to stand in front of Jag so they can’t see her. So they don’t do whatever it is Threm was suggesting they’d do.

  “What did you do?” Talluck bellows at Threm. “What did you do?” He repeats it over and over until a goblin hits him with a gun butt once more—this time in the side of the head, sending him to the floor.

  Jag stays on all fours, head bowed.

  “What did you do?” Talluck shouts again, even though his mouth is muffled with blood.

  “Nothing,” Threm yells back, even as the goblins keep yelling at them all to shut up, to lie still. “I did nothing!” he screams.

  “Liar!” Talluck is still struggling. Gets hit again. There’s an ugly cracking sound, and Talluck goes limp.

  Edwyll howls with rage. A gun barrel is thrust into his face. He goes very quiet.

  In the silence that follows, one of the goblins stalks forward. “Where is she?” he asks the room.

  “Hiding behind the brixie.”

  Edwyll’s eyes go wide. Lila is pointing at him. Is pointing at Jag behind him.

  She smiles sadly at Edwyll. “Threm’s right,” she says. “I just realized it before he did. I called them here.”

  Edwyll keeps looking and looking and looking and still it is Lila there, saying these things to him. Lila who encouraged him; Lila who told him of spots to paint on the streets; Lila who pushed him to be better than he is; Lila who is his friend, his confidant, his mentor. It is Lila who is pointing at him. At Jag.

  The Spriggans start to close. “No,” he says. “No. Why?”

  “Because we exist at their whim,” Lila says. “Because this house, this life—it doesn’t just exist because the world loves art. Grow up, Eddy. You’re smart. Be smart. We exist because House Spriggan pays coin for Jallow’s art. They are the ones who allow Jallow’s art to put food on our table. And I do not bite the hand that feeds. But then you come here with Jaggered Red. With the heir of House Red. And you say you want to save this city, Edwyll, but you don’t understand it at all. Not its rivalries. Not its players. Not its risks. So don’t look at me with horror because you don’t understand the consequences of your actions. Because you don’t understand the danger that you’ve put us all in. Look at me with gratitude as I save you from yourself, and be thankful that all it will cost is one goblin’s skin.”

  And Edwyll keeps looking and looking, and still all he sees is a thing in Lila’s form. This thing that looks at him with pity and anger, and no regret at all.

  And then he snaps. And he is lunging at Lila, hands outstretched, and she is reeling back, and Spriggans have him by the arms and are hauling him away, shouting, shouting. There is so much sound. And Jag is behind him, coming up swinging, screaming at them to get off him, and a Spriggan
is leveling a gun.

  Then there is a roar, and suddenly Talluck is not limp on the floor, is not dead or unconscious. Instead, the huge demi-dryad is coming up, bringing both fists into a Spriggan’s guts, lifting the creature off the floor with a great two-handed blow and sending him flying away.

  A gun goes off, deafening in the small space, but no one seems to fall back, and Talluck is still going, grabbing another Spriggan around the neck and swinging him in an arc.

  Then there is more gunfire, and Talluck’s body seems to ripple under the onslaught, and the goblin he has by the neck drops to the floor, and smoke starts to fill the room.

  Edwyll is on the floor again, is clawing forward, is screaming Talluck’s name.

  More gunfire. Edwyll freezes, waiting for the pain. But this time the goblins are falling, and he looks, and Threm has a gun, has somehow seized it from someone, and is spraying bullets wildly, barely hanging onto the end of the weapon as he tries to wrestle it into an arc around the room.

  Artwork splinters, cracks, sprays shrapnel. Wood pulp flies off rehabilitated objects. Murals are defaced. Holes are punched into the faces of photographs, and periods like fists are smashed into lines of poetry.

  The goblins are firing. He is rolling, desperately trying to find cover. Threm goes down. Lila is screaming. And this is her, Edwyll thinks. This is the horror Lila has put in the world.

  Silence then—longer than the chaos it has replaced, gun smoke drifting through the room. Then grunting, sobbing, an ugly gurgling sound. Edwyll looks up. Threm is just feet from him, sputtering as blood leaks from a hole in his neck. A noise Edwyll cannot control or identify wrenches out of him. He crawls toward Threm, but by the time he gets to the gnome, Threm has gone still.

  Everything seems still now. Edwyll sits up. He stares. The goblins are lying on the floor, bodies shredded. Talluck’s massive body is splayed and punctured like a felled tree.

  The tree Edwyll painted is still tacked to the wall. The sheet of cloth is tattered and ragged, stitched with bullet holes, their edges seared black. The symbol of hope is obscured by destruction.

  Lila is curled at its base. The pixie is rocking back and forth. She has Jallow’s head in her lap. His blood spreads around them both like the train of a great crimson gown.

  Edwyll wants to say something, wants to spit into Lila’s face. He wants to scream that the pixie brought this on herself. He wants to put his hands around Lila’s throat and demand why, why, why she did this, knowing that no explanation can ever be enough. He wants to laugh in Lila’s face and tell her that this is the beauty she created.

  He can’t do any of it. He looks down at Threm. His heart feels like it’s dying. All the hope and blood in him congealing into something dark and bitter. Because Threm was right.

  Just like Lila said he was.

  Movement to Edwyll’s right. He flinches around, bringing his fists up, not knowing what he’ll do with them.

  Jag is there, staring at him, shell-shocked. She looks at the bodies. She shakes her head. She reaches out to him, but Edwyll steps back. He feels cold and lonely.

  “We should…” she says.

  Lila’s head snaps up, her eyes two coals burning white. “You…” she hisses.

  And there are things Edwyll wants to say. There are things he wants to scream in her face. There is Threm’s blood and Talluck’s that he wants to dip his fingers into and run down her cheeks while telling her that she is the one responsible.

  But he can’t. He just can’t. He is too fixed on the image of her telling him that the collective is just House Spriggan’s plaything. That her artistic principles mean nothing when push comes to shove. That the heart of the collective is, and always has been, a lie.

  So Edwyll turns his back on her. He has nothing left for the pixie. For her broken promises.

  He looks toward the door, toward the Iron City beyond. Toward the chaos and insanity that is the night, the riots, the uprising. There is only one other safe space he can think of. One other place where—no matter how sad, and small, and pathetic it is—he survives.

  “I want to go home,” he says to Jag. “I’m going to take you there.”

  Jag nods. “OK.”

  Lila stirs, but they keep on ignoring her. Keep on walking away.

  “He’s dead,” Lila shouts at them. “He’s dead because you brought that goblin here.”

  And Edwyll knows that’s not true. But he knows that it is too.

  They walk down the broken hallway. And they are still together, they are still united by purpose. But in the Iron City, Edwyll is no longer wholly sure what that’s worth.

  Sil

  Sil is sweating. She is trying to hide the tremor in her hands. Desire has broken free inside her mind, but it has brought friends with it. Doubt and fear swill in her skull.

  You will obey. She was broken down and rebuilt around this phrase. You will serve. This was the limit placed on her will. They beat it into her. They broke her bones to teach it to her. Then, when she was healed, they would just break them again. And when that pain stopped being a sufficient motivator, they showed her that pain could always get worse. Some tutors seemed to enjoy that lesson especially. One—a fae in Osmondo’s employ—most of all. And so, she has screamed her throat bloody before. She has begged, and groveled, and offered up her body to escape. Those tutors simply watched. They did not laugh, or sneer. They did not show pity. They just watched and waited until the lesson was learned.

  Now, she knows her lessons are lies. Now, she is free, and there is joy in that—there is leaping ecstasy at the thought of all that she could do—and there is rage too in the recognition of what she has lived through—but there is also so much fear that she thinks she might buckle under its weight.

  Am I going to do this? The closer they get to the fae leadership, the louder and more frequently the question rings through her head.

  Would it just be easier to kill these fae?

  The answer, of course, is yes. She doesn’t want to, though. And that matters. And she does, truly and deeply, want to erase Osmondo Red from the face of this city. She wants it a thousand times over. She wants to drive the blade into his heart again and again and again.

  But she is so very scared of wanting it.

  “Almost there,” Bee says.

  Her stomach lurches. She has been so lost in her own head she has lost track of where they are. If she doesn’t get her head on straight, she’ll be dead within thirty seconds of entering House Red Cap.

  Or maybe I can send others in instead. Or maybe we can ambush him. Or…

  The factory that the Fae Liberation Front is leading her toward is well guarded. Armed fae watch them from rooftops and alleyways. They communicate with well-rehearsed hand signals. No one in the Fae Liberation Front seems to notice them.

  Sil hesitates on the factory threshold, fear rising up her spine like a tide. She wrestles to make her own desire the master she serves.

  “Down here.” Bee points towards a door and stairs that lead to the basement.

  It’s a good defensible position, she thinks. The guards outside are set up well, with long lines of sight and good coverage to ensure that they’re hard to sneak up on. One fae can take down many before they’re likely to be injured. Within the factory, the path to the basement door is winding, difficult to navigate. The steps down set up a natural chokepoint. It’s how she would have set it up. How she was taught to do it.

  “It’s a kobold in charge,” Bee tells her as they head down the stairs. “He’s old school, lot of goblin hatred in him, but I think when it comes to the chance to take Osmondo Red’s head, that’s going to be in our favor.” He smiles, a jagged slash of teeth in the darkness. She nods, feeling once more like a spectator, watching herself go through these motions, not quite believing in them.

  Am I going to do this?

  There is a surprising familiarity to the scene at the bottom of the stairs. Someone has approximated a goblin war room. She sees stations
set up for operations, supply management, reconnaissance, and intelligence. Instead of the clipped efficiency of a goblin operation, though, these fae move with frantic excess. Pixies run and sidhe shout. Dryads blunder back and forth. It all is so very fae, she almost sneers. Some things, she supposes, are hard to unlearn.

  “Hey,” Bee calls to a tall dryad near the center of things. “Where’s Skart?”

  The dryad looks at them, slightly wild-eyed. “An office,” she says, “at the back. But—”

  The Fae Liberation Front ignore the rest, marching Sil with them to the back rooms. There are five offices there, but voices emerge from only one. Bee knocks, then opens the door without waiting for an answer.

  There are two fae within. One, a disheveled youth, wearing dirty clothes and a stunned expression. The other…

  The other…

  The other…

  All around Sil, the world fades away. The chaos of shouting is muffled. The scuff of bodies pressing in evaporates. The faces of the expectant Fae Liberation Front drift off into shadow.

  Now, here, it all comes down to this: to him, and her, and memory.

  Skart

  One more minute and he would have had the Dust. Just one more.

  “What will you choose?” he had asked Knull, and it had been as if he were playing the brixie like an instrument, as if he were strumming a beautiful tune.

  “I…” Knull had opened his mouth, and the silence had been like the orchestra breathing, taking a moment before the great crescendo.

  “I’m not going to force you,” Skart had said. “I’m not the goblins, Knull. I’m everything they are not. This is a real choice.”

  “I don’t…” Knull had shaken his head. “I…”

  “If you help me end the oppression,” Skart had said, “then you no longer need to escape it.”

  And that had done it. He’d seen it in Knull’s eyes. Something between surrender and enlightenment. The seed from which resolve would grow. And in a minute, he would have had the location of the Dust. In a minute, everything would have been over.