City of Iron and Dust

by J. P. Oakes

  There’s a broken bit of PVC pipe on the ground at his feet—a stained piece of plumbing that’s just a little longer than his leg. Picking it up is precarious. He jars his shattered ankle over and over, barking with pain each time. Eventually he has it, tests it to see if it will take his weight. Its broken end bites against his palm but it’s better than nothing.

  You don’t have to take all the Dust, a voice whispers in his head. Just take a pinch of it to a healer and your ankle will never bother you again.

  He looks back at the brick almost against his will. Because if he gives in, just indulges for a moment, then everything would be easier…

  He shudders again. The seduction of it is already working on him. He has to get away as fast as he can. He has to never look back.

  But movement makes his eyes linger just a little longer. The suggestion of an arm reaching out. A slow, pained movement. He squints, tries to make out what he’s seeing more clearly, because in the back of his head he knows he glimpsed a fae’s body in there, he knows that it could be Edwyll, and even though he knows that in the Iron City hope is a lie, it is not quite dead in his heart.

  The movement comes again—a jerking agonized spasm that sends an arm up into the air and then brings it down to the ground, the hand fixed in a claw.

  A body hauls itself over the dirt and through the leaves, grunting and gasping as it comes.

  “Edwyll.” It’s hardly a word. It’s more a breath. A barely voiced wish.

  Edwyll’s other arm comes up, grabs at a root that breaks through the rotten old carpet.

  “Edwyll!” He screams it. A flock of blackbirds perched around a body outside takes flight with a rush of wings. His brother doesn’t look up.

  Edwyll is, Knull realizes, making his way toward the Dust. The longer he watches, the clearer his brother’s intent is. Edwyll’s progress is brutally slow, but he is fixed on his goal. He can hear his grunts of pain now.

  Knull goes to shout again but the words clog in his mouth. Because he needs to scream at his brother that no, this is not the way; that the only thing in that plastic wrapping is horror; that he has stayed clean this far; that he cannot succumb at the end. He cannot. But how can he say that to him? As he claws toward his only chance of survival, how can he tell his little brother to not do it? After all he has done himself? He should be there, hauling it toward Eddy, shoveling the shit into his nose, his mouth.

  But Knull wants so badly to run. He wants so badly to not be here to see this, to see the inevitable end. He wants, desperately, to live.

  He stands there, paralyzed, silent, a witness.

  Then he sees Skart.

  At first, he doesn’t know what he’s seeing. On the far side of the room the sprawling plant-thing rolls over the remains of an external wall, and tumbles toward the brick of Dust. Branches and leaves and pieces of thorn break from it as it falls, its bulk lessens, and Knull begins to make out the shape beneath. He realizes he is looking at the shape of a fae. Something awful has happened to him—transformative, traumatic—but despite it all he is somehow still alive, is still moving with purpose, is still moving toward the Dust. And that dreadful, implacable purpose lets him give that fae a name.

  Skart and Edwyll. They are caught in the vortex, trapped by the inescapable currents of its influence. Both of them thinking the Dust will help them. Both of them thinking that it will let them escape.

  Knull has seen a lot of fae take Dust. He knows the fae think Dust is a lot of things: a path back to the past, bliss, part of their cultural heritage. They think it’s the best way to hurt themselves they know. Knull has his own theory. Dust, to him, is nothing but an amplifier. It takes everything you are in a single moment and cranks it to eleven. Lust-filled fae become fecund fertility figures, rutting in golden leaves and bunny shit. The same fae snort Dust in a moment of hate and they become avatars of destruction. Those who look for escape find paths that burrow deep into their own navel. There’s nothing very special about it to Knull. Dust just takes a fae, the best and worst of them, and makes it scream out loud.

  Knull looks at Skart and Edwyll advancing on the Dust and he knows exactly who he wants to get there first. But the longer he looks, the longer he sees Edwyll make his slow, ragged movements, the clearer it is that he will get there last.

  And still the easiest thing to do is leave. It always has been. He’s done it before. He’s done it again, and again. And he’s got the crutch in his hand. He’s got the path out of here all plotted out. Edwyll is already most of the way dead. If Knull is going to survive, he has to leave. He’s got to escape the sucking mire of the Dust. He has to. There isn’t a choice.

  But of course, there isn’t a choice. There hasn’t been since he first saw Edwyll’s arm move. Because he can’t leave him to die again. As scared as he is. As foolish as it is. As futile as everything involving the Dust is. There is no choice. Because he’s his brother. Because he has betrayed him as much as he can. Because this time he has to be there for him. He has to. There isn’t a choice.

  So, he lurches into motion, smashes his ankle against the floor, screams, staggers, almost falls, crashes through three more steps that feel more like falling than walking, and he keeps going, hobbling, hopping, careening from outcropping of rubble to trunk of half-present tree. He doesn’t have a plan but he has a need. He has a goal and that’s enough to keep propelling him forward.

  He blunders through the remains of the doorway that marks the limits of his and Bee’s previous intrusion into the house. He steps into the clearing of trees that Skart has half-summoned. The brick of Dust is close. He can feel it pulling with untapped power. Skart has done something to it, awakened it. Its siren song is a pulse inside his head.

  They’re all inside the room now. None of them are more than five yards from the Dust. Knull. Edwyll. What’s left of Skart. They’re all closing in on the prize, on the final moment between now and the future.

  But Knull’s still moving fastest. As damaged as he is, he is still more whole than Skart. He can still get there first. He can take it, can save Edwyll, can put the world to rights, can grind Skart beneath his heel. He can send the goblins tumbling from their glass towers and pull their opera houses down upon their ears. He can rip up the Iron Wall and scatter the pieces to the heavens. He can do whatever the fuck he wants. A life without limits. A life without fear.

  He takes a step toward the Dust. Another.

  Skart sees him. What’s left of the kobold pauses in its lumbering progress for just a moment. Vines and creepers wave unsteadily in Knull’s direction.

  Knull takes another step toward the Dust.

  Edwyll’s crawl seems to have taken on a newfound urgency. He grunts and spits as he leaves a bloody trail behind him.

  All three of them are steps away now; all three are just seconds away. The moment is closing down, all the possibilities in the world shrinking down to one.

  Knull is close enough now. He could reach out. He could take the Dust.

  He puts all his weight on his one good foot and takes his PVC pipe in both hands. He swings for the fences he’s never been able to reach before.

  The pipe crashes into Skart. PVC splinters with an audible snap. The kobold—despite his foliage bulk, reels, steps backward, is halted in his merciless progression. And then the torque of the blow catches up with Knull. The shock of the impact runs up his arms. It’s all more than Knull’s foot can take. He careens over, tumbles as Skart tumbles. The two of them sprawl, both howling, Knull in pain, Skart in impotent rage.

  And Knull has pitched himself, has angled himself, so that he falls face first down into the Dust.

  Because he can’t walk away anymore.

  Skart

  He is so close. He is so close. Just feet away. All that is between him and the whole future of the fae, the goblins, the Iron City, are these two, these ignorant children.

  And yet, for all their youth, for all their ineptitude, for all that they are—they are too much for him.<
br />
  Knull

  Knull breathes.

  Dust in his nose, his lungs, his mouth. Dust clogging and cloying in his throat. Dust filling everything, burning, and scouring. Dust in his eyes, his ears. Euphoria and pain hand in hand inside him, reaching through him. Pain to rival the pain of a life wasted. Joy to rival that. Dust in every part of him. Dust in everything. Dust as everything. Dust as the world. His world. Making him into the world. Everything Dust. Everything him.

  Knull breathes.

  Knull rising. Knull on the wind. Knull as the wind. Knull above everything. Knull as everything he is above. Knull above himself. Looking down on himself. His body as the city. His body as iron. His body as Dust. Looking down on his body. Looking down on the ruin it has become.

  He did not know it could be like this. His brief dalliances with the thrice-cut bullshit Cotter passed off to him—a Dust neophyte—in no way prepared him for this moment, for the doors of his perception being blown from their hinges, for the full breadth of experience charging through them without hesitation or caution.

  Knull breathes.

  Knull above. Knull below. Knull as a million fae. As a million fae refusing to look up. A million fae refusing to see the sun, or hope, or joy. As a million fae who have forgotten that life promised them something better if only they would fight for it.

  Knull breathes. He sucks the Dust into himself. And he has not prepared the way Skart prepared. He does not know the ways to prolong this power. He is not building to an inferno. This is bright and hot. This is pure, flaming impulse.

  Knull breathes. Dust burns.

  Knull as the sun. Knull as the horizon, as the curtain about to be pulled back to reveal the light. Knull as the inevitable day that sweeps away the dark. Knull as warmth and hope. Knull as a promise of something better.

  Knull breathes though his lungs are mostly gone now, dissolved away. His chest is full of Dust and blood.

  Knull as the night. Knull as the long dark with no end. Knull as the blank cold. Knull as death. As reprisal. As condemnation for all that has been done, for all the opportunities wasted, for all the children betrayed. Knull as his own revenge.

  Knull breathes.

  Knull is full of Dust, is full of power. Knull is full of potential and full of rage and full of hope.

  Knull as the future.

  He can do anything, he realizes. He is magic, pure and simple. He is infinite potential and all he needs to be is shaped. All he needs is purpose, and here now, realizing that the only thing this magic will not let him do is survive, Knull realizes that he has never really had purpose. Has never really known what he would do when he escaped the Iron City. The dream has always been empty.

  And yet, as he looks down, as he feels the lives all around him, the hearts and the minds, and all barriers peeled back, he knows that he has always been inches away from someone who has had a clear vision. Who has always been striving to recreate the future in a very specific image.

  Knull as a voice in Edwyll’s mind. Knull as a question.

  Edwyll gasps, rolls back, flails. But Knull washes in and blots out the pain.

  Knull as a promise. As a penitent. As a brother.

  Knull breathes. Edwyll breathes. And they find a resonance. A synchronicity.

  Knull as a question: What do you want?

  And here, at the last, Knull finds, Edwyll can picture it so clearly.

  Knull as a tool in his brother’s hands. Knull as a paintbrush. Knull as a sculptor’s clay.

  Knull as a tree. Knull as the symbol of the fae. Knull as the thing they always look back at. Knull as the memory that has become a trap, a yoke. Knull as the heart of the fae, become sickly and weak.

  Knull as a tree. Knull as a symbol transformed, renewed. Knull as something beautiful and blooming and full of life. Knull as something forcing the fae to look up.

  Knull as a tree. Knull as a reminder, a reprimand, a rebuke. Knull as a refutation of nostalgia.

  Knull as everything. In one moment. In one final defiant cry of creativity.

  Knull breathes. Knull creates. Knull tries to say sorry to Edwyll for everything.

  A tree grows in the Iron City. A tree spears up from the ground. A tree to dwarf all trees. A tree to dwarf a city. It rushes upward, towering over houses, over casinos, over high-rises. It rushes up to be a ceiling to the world. A tree with a trunk the size of a city block. A tree with a trunk that’s growing larger. A tree that reaches out with vast branches the length of city districts.

  It is a tree obsidian black. A tree the color of mourning. Because this is not a celebration. This is not the victory of the fae. This is so far from that. But neither is it a memorial. Neither is it a gravestone. Its curious, sharp-angled branches are alive. The buds on them hold the promise of life and beauty to come.

  And still it grows. Every last dreg of Dust is pouring through Knull, is tearing him apart, is making him nothing but a conduit for this vision plucked from Edwyll’s mind.

  And still the tree reaches higher. It is impossible but real. It is absurd but undeniable. It is something for all to see. Something they cannot ignore. And across the Iron City heads start to turn. Heads start to look up. Eyes start to search for the sun.

  Knull is not breathing anymore. There’s not much of him left to breathe. But he has stopped hurting. And he can still see. He can see what he has created, what Edwyll has created through him, with him. He can see it towering over him, over the city, over everything. And it is, he sees, beautiful. And he realizes he never expected beauty from life. He never saw that possibility in himself, in the Iron City. And it seems now like a great failure on his part, but he is so very glad that he saw it before the end.

  He can still feel the other lives around him. He feels impossibly connected to the city and its fae in this moment. He can feel Skart’s impotence, and horror, and rage. He can feel the goblins’ bile. And he still feels Edwyll too. His wonder at this creation. He can feel the blood pumping from Edwyll’s wound.

  And Knull finds that there is still a little magic left in this world for his brother.

  He does not know how to repair wounds, how to knit flesh and sew back arteries and nerves. He knows no more of that than he did before. Perhaps if he had longer, he could pluck the knowledge from a healer’s head. But he does not have longer. He only has this last final violent spasm of power. And yet he finds now that with this much Dust, knowledge can be superseded by intent alone, and he intends for Edwyll to live, to survive, to see this future that Knull is trying so desperately to create on his behalf.

  He feels Edwyll gasp. Feels flesh knit.

  He feels Bee close by. And he wants, he finds, to put him back together too. The bryad has earned that at least.

  And he realizes at the last—the very last—he too would like to live. So he turns his will, his intent, his power upon himself.

  But here he finds, like all do eventually, that his power fails him. The magic that heals is also the weapon that wounds. To try to heal himself is to tear himself apart. He cannot. His fate is sealed.

  Knull as a fuse burning down to nothing. Knull as the last flicker of fire.

  Knull as the future detonating. Knull as Edwyll’s vision born. Knull undeniable. Knull as a brother. Knull as a fae not satisfied, but at peace with the little he has done, with the knowledge that others will still be able to carry on the fight.

  Knull breathes no more. Knull finally escapes the Iron City.

  20

  Wasted Youth

  Jag

  Jag wanders through House Red in a daze, in a haze of gun smoke. Soldiers run past her, heavy boots clattering on delicate tile. Goblins shout but always one corridor away, always just around the corner. She cannot piece together what has happened. She hears Sil’s name, she hears panic, but there are no details. There is just gun smoke drifting in empty halls.

  Sil left her, Jag thinks, without a backward glance. And at first she was afraid, and aghast, but then she thought that perh
aps that was actually everything she’d always been trying to help Sil achieve. That was the inevitable end goal.

  She is, she finds, happy for her half-sister.

  Her passage through the halls proceeds unimpeded. No one calls to her. No one bars her way. She is flotsam floating over chaos she doesn’t quite understand. That she doesn’t want to understand. She is leaving the Iron City. She is leaving all this behind. It is the only path for survival that she can still see.

  She heads down the long broad corridor that is normally used to lead blindfolded guests in and out of House Red Cap. There is evidence that a great many soldiers were here recently. They’re gone now. She finds a pistol lying on the floor, though, and slips it into the back of her waistband. She thinks perhaps she should be prepared to take care of herself now.

  A single goblin waits at the end of the corridor, an anxious functionary with a starched collar and large, wild eyes.

  “Passage,” Jag demands.

  “But…” the goblin stammers.

  Jag is glad she picked up the gun. The functionary stares at it, breathing hard. Finally, he presses the button on his radio.

  At the functionary’s command, the wall dissolves into leaves and air. A robin flutters past Jag’s head. She steps through into a room in which blindfolded fae kneel, bound hand and foot.

  Her father never revealed the secret of her passage in and out of House Red’s sealed walls. It is another secret he was too paranoid to let go. That the answer is horrifying does not shock her. It is just, she finds, sad. And disappointing that it has taken her this long to realize that the only way forward—for herself, for the House, for the Iron City as a whole—is for everything that her father has even striven for to be thrown away.