by Lee Bond
“What the fuck have I gotten myself into, here?” Garth took the first step.
***
Agnethea curtseyed graciously to her guest. “Well met, Master Nickels.” She breathed the man’s name. She wondered if he felt even the remotest bit of a stirring towards her; following that initial spate of furious attraction, the Queen was ashamed to admit she’d caught herself musing over Master Nickels on more than one occasion, doubly so after hearing of the carnage he’d left in his wake.
The Queen of Ickford smiled drolly. “Or should I call you Specter?”
Garth did his best not to look at Agnethea, filling his senses instead with memories of Naoko’s perfume, of the sound of her laughter, the feel of that fleeing kiss in the Museum before everything had gone so fucking pear-shaped. When that didn’t work, he buried himself in the sounds of her terror as she’d been trapped inside the main hall, surrounded by terrorists.
That didn’t work either, so he cleared his throat and stared at the floor. “I prefer Garth.”
“Of course you do.” Agnethea dipped her head, the tiniest of smirks tugging at the corners of her dainty mouth, “Specter is a man hunted by Gearmen, who, by the by, entered my fair city not five hours ago. Caused a bit of a ruckus, I’m told. None of their ilk have ever dared cross the threshold before now, and all know they hunt you. Since their tumultuous arrival they have proven themselves to be fair-minded and aren’t doing anything save investigating.”
Garth took the news with a brief raised eyebrow. It’d been bound to happen sooner or later. Better in a mad city like Ickford than on the open road. “Good to know.”
Agnethea gestured languidly for Garth to sit. The man was a stone! Being hunted by Gearmen was no small thing, yet he shrugged the news off without effort. Moreover, he still showed no fear towards her at all, a quirk that was throwing her off to a considerable degree; by now, with all he’d seen and learned, he should be a gibbering mass of polite words and nervous ticks.
But there was nothing of the sort! What manner of man was he?
She’d taken the man’s incredulous countenance and poor manners upon the matter of their first meeting as being the result of Barnabas filling his head with lies about who and what Golems were, only…
Only it wasn’t that at all. It was something else entirely, and Queen Agnethea resolved to understand a man who showed no fear of an ancient terror.
“I’ll stand, thanks.” Garth watched Agnethea sit, then took a moment to examine the woman’s ‘office’.
It was crowded with books, actual, real books made from paper and everything, which, after thirty thousand years of various forms of strife and war and all that, was something of a miracle. Here and there on the bookshelves and atop tables were intricate little toys or tools that clicked and clacked; Garth spotted a deviously designed clock that was full of shiny bright ball bearings the size of eyes, each in continual motion, setting all manner of grooved plates in eternal motion. He smiled at the strangely simple yet complex contrivance.
“That has been counting time for a preposterous amount of time.” Agnethea said softly. “Since I turned it on, it has not stopped. Please. Sit.”
DarkEye spat out a number. Garth ignored it –and Agnethea’s entreaty to sit- in favor of becoming more familiar with the layout of the room. The far wall was dominated by maps of all sizes, a surprise that piqued his interest instantly.
Maps! They were the first of their kind that he’d seen in all his travels, and not for a lack of looking or asking; it seemed that when King’s whimsy could change the layout of the land in a single evening, what point was there in maps?
Ignoring both Agnethea’s look of shock and her aborted gasp of disbelief, Garth walked away from the Queen, intent on getting a good long look at how the world had once been. Each map had been hand-drawn by someone with considerable skill, rendered in detail intricate enough to suggest that the cartographer had had time to do the job properly. Since gearheads couldn’t handle that kind of focus and humans were the soft and squishy chew toys of the wild things, either the Queen had done it or she’d had one of her freakshow Golems put pencil to paper.
The largest and most current map lay smack in the middle of the assortment, and was by far the most precise out of them all. He read some of the carefully scripted names written beside geographical features he’d wanted to visit with Barnabas: Rotten Tor Embrace, Hidden Sliptown, Righteous Rick’s Ambuscade, Lonely Whisper, Giant Head, Not-as-Giant Head.
He turned his attention to the other maps, amazed and appalled –once again- at the power one man had given himself, and the uses that power was being put to.
“Are you by chance a cartographer?” Agnethea wondered casually, though inwardly, she was a steaming hot mess. She played at being disinterested in the adulation or fear of others, but the truth of the matter was, she’d been alive for a tremendously long time and had grown so accustomed to others being terrified of her that that fear was a part of her.
That was it! Garth’s patent lack of terror in his presence was the intoxicant! She was only attracted to him because he was unafraid! Now she knew, it could be … ignored.
“No.” Garth tapped a map. “The walls in this one, separating the various ‘levels’ of Arcade City, they’re completely different than now. There are fewer.”
“The King experimented with their placement.” Agnethea supplied. “When gearheads grow complacent or otherwise too predatory on the Estates, he changes our world to remind them –and us all- who holds the true power in Arcade City.”
Agnethea grimaced at the memories of those times and continued. “That manifestation of Arcade City was vile. Too many gearheads in too large an environment. It lasted but a hundred years, prompting the arrival of a great many more Walls.”
Garth ran his metal-capped fingers over another. This map was by far and away the oldest, the parchment yellowed with age and nearly thin as air. “This one shows walls only around the inner city, this place called Arcadia.”
Agnethea smiled. A simpler time, then. More or less. “That was longer ago than you might think.”
DarkEye spat out another number. Garth ignored it. He’d concluded Agnethea’s relative age without the machine’s aid, simply by looking around the room she felt most comfortable in. It was no wonder people were terrified of her. She was older even than Sa Gurant. Twice as old, at bare minimum.
Garth turned back to Agnethea as she stood pensively at her desk, hands resting lightly atop the burnished wood. She’d replaced her frilly veil of the morning with something less busy. Even with her eyes shrouded, his heart skipped a beat. Specter surged upwards in that moment, responding to Garth’s unwanted ardor and Agnethea’s unmistakable heat like the savage it was. Garth ground his teeth together and clenched his fists. Specter subsided with an unhappy growl.
Agnethea’s breath caught in her throat. There. Just for a second. A dark, gleaming presence flaring out of the lens attached to Garth’s face, a brutal hunger demanding satiation. A brief frown flickered quickly as she considered what she’d just born witness to; no one Welded to the Iron could control that foul rage, not even if they desperately sought such skill and did all they could to learn it. The only way to be free of it was to move inward all the way to Arcadia.
To bury that anger, to swallow it …
Wanton spiritual destruction at its finest.
From what Agnethea knew of Specter’s brutality, there was no single man in all of Arcade City angrier and more violent than Specter. And there he was. Acting … normal. His activities in Ickford alone painted him as a devil on the wind, ready and capable of painting her town red if someone so much as crinkled an eyelash the wrong way.
Garth shook his head, both in apology for the sudden spark of anger, and to clear his head of almost-rabid lust. His stupid brain reminded him it’d been very nearly … six solid years since he’d been properly laid. “You’d be surprised what I think, lady.”
Agnethea frowned, lips purs
ing. Under normal circumstances, ‘lady’ was a compliment, yet somehow, this time, she thought not. “And what do you think?”
“I think,” Garth said carefully, “that you are at least eleven thousand years old.”
The number was so preposterously close to the truth that Agnethea’s lower jaw dropped a fraction of an inch before she caught herself. Not even the other Obsidian Golems had a true appreciation for her age. “And how,” the Queen of Ickford demanded when she could trust her voice not to quaver, “could you have arrived at such a … lengthy … lifespan?”
Garth drawled the word. “Math.”
“Math.” Agnethea quirked an eyebrow. “Numbers.”
“Yeah.” The Engineer stamped a foot on the floor. Just as solid as the walls, just as full of mechanisms. “This castle alone is built on the bones of thousands of gearheads, Queen Agnethea, as are the walls surrounding the whole city. In fact, most of the city itself was built the same way. There are very few ways of getting that much raw material. Easiest way is to know where the bodies are buried, because the metal heads aren’t exactly … concerned with the dead.”
“At least you do me the courtesy of being neither offended nor horrified.”
Garth flashed a guilty grin. “I’ve come to grips with how this world works, Agnethea. Don’t mean I like it, though.” He flexed an arm, marveling at the sight of the complex machinery recalibrating to deal with the sudden swell. “But … it does the job.”
“And,” Agnethea seized the moment to bring the conversation around to where she wanted it to be, “what job is that?”
Garth dropped his arm, tilted his head to stare at Agnethea. Now that he knew how old she was, it was easy enough to explain his attraction to her. He wanted to say ‘for all her faults and flaws and hungers’ she was a beautiful, powerful woman who knew what she wanted but … it wasn’t that at all. Queen Agnethea of Ickford was the closest thing to a Kith’kineen he’d ever find. In her arms, he would never have to worry about being judged.
“Everyone I know, even outside, says people like you are terror incarnate, Agnethea.” Garth took that proffered seat by dropping rudely into the leather chair, accepting the cool repose on his host’s face.
Old and ancient and powerful, sure, except some wounds never healed. “Why should I trust you?”
A bright peal of laughter erupted from Agnethea. “Trust? Who said anything about trust, Master Nickels? You arrived with Barnabas. That alone is more than enough reason to string you up and launch you at the Wall. There are scant few reasons why I should trust you at all. Had I not immediately pieced together various whispers and musings, you wouldn’t be here at all. In truth, I would’ve either arranged for your death or handed you over to the Gearmen.”
Now it was Garth’s turn to laugh. “Woman, there isn’t a single thing in this entire pocket-sized Universe capable of causing me permanent harm.”
“How dare you.” Agnethea hissed. “I could snap your neck in an instant. I could pull your limbs loose before you could even move. I could…”
“Try it.” Garth suggested. Specter danced just in the background, eager to prove his dominance.
“Your armor is no match for me, Master Nickels.” Agnethea crooned slyly, fluttering the veil covering her eyes suggestively. “Amazing though it may be, it is still just armor.”
Garth shook his head. “You know that I am Specter.”
Agnethea nodded slowly. Such gravity in the man’s tone. Such weariness. He sounded older than her by thousands of decades.
“Then you must also know the story well enough to know that when I did for the patrons of Kingspawn Pub, I wore no armor.” Garth leaned back in his chair. He wished the Queen’s eyes weren’t obscured. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking by body language alone.
Agnethea fluttered a hand, a manicured butterfly flitting through the air. “Artistic license.”
“I wish.” Garth said stridently. “With all my heart and soul.”
“Im … possible.” Agnethea knew more about Dark Iron than anyone save Barnabas Blake.
Iron didn’t act like it did in those fanciful songs and stories.
It couldn’t.
Garth spread his arms wide. “Tell me what you think is the truth then.”
Agnethea’s confidence was a bit shaken, but she forged on anyways. “The … minstrel … was obviously mistaken about some of the things she saw. Thought she saw. Barnabas and Nicked Jimmy never got along very well, most specifically because that particular gearhead did his level best to continually destroy extremely, ah, ‘farm-worthy’ warriors. Jimmy was renowned in certain circles as a man worth killing, if only to restore the status quo. It is estimated that, during the time of his misguided revenge against the Warden who wronged him, Nicked Jimmy ‘wasted’ nearly two hundred of his Dark Iron brethren.”
“A veritable cornucopia of gears, cogs, metal hollow bones and hearts.” Garth commented. “A damn fine reason to do for Jimmy. Obviously something a Gearmaster like Barnabas would encourage or even engineer. This is fascinating. Go on.”
It was plain to see Garth –for all his intelligence and perception- had failed to learn the true identity of his traveling companion. Though it would be a grand point to score in their bickering match, Agnethea was nevertheless loathe to make it; though Barnabas could do little to bother her, her city or her people, he could still nevertheless get Kingly and make arrival at Ickford nearly impossible. It’d take some doing, but do it he would. “Like as not, Barnabas found you, trapped you in that magnificent suit of armor, and forced you to do for Jimmy and the rest. Since then, the two of you have been traveling through Arcade City, killing and harvesting the toughest crews around. That’s what your problem is. You are trapped in that suit. I can remove it, if …”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, if I do some little bullshit side quest for you. I got that.” Garth scratched his nose as best he could then looked at Agnethea. He was getting used to the absence of information when his eyes fell on her. “If your story was right, if Barnabas was the creator of this armor, if I’d been forced into being Specter by another man’s commands, then I wouldn’t feel the guilt I feel. The story you’re telling is fiction. Whichever singer or musician is running around Ickford telling the tale of what she saw is telling the one hundred percent truth. Oh, she might be pumping it up full of horror and intrigue, but the key factors are all true.”
“You are … were … a fish.” Agnethea asked.
“Fishy-fish the would-be blacksmith.” Garth quipped, adroitly mimicking Nicked Jimmy’s particular accent to a tee. He tipped an imaginary hat. “At yer service.”
“You drank a total of a quarter-gallon of crudest Dark Iron over the course of evening.” The statement came out as a whisper. Not possible. Ash. Tinder. Twisted metal and blackened burned bones. That’s what came of that. She’d seen it. She’d caused it to happen.
More than once.
Garth swallowed reflexively, memories of the blowtorch scorching through him, searing his flesh once more. “Dark Iron tried to weld me to King’s Will that night, Queen Agnethea, a blowtorch through my soul, white hot agony shearing through me. It failed. I kept drinking, all unawares, drowning my existential sorrow, able as I was for the first time in history to get blind stinking drunk. In my sorrow, in my rage, Specter rose up of the bleak darkness and like a dark storm, I ripped those gearheads to pieces.”
Over the course of her long, long life, Agnethea had quizzed –sometimes politely, other times at the point of a knife- gearheads about their moment with Dark Iron, hungrily eager to find out why and how things had gone so weirdly for her. To a one, their queer faces grew all somber, all hung sorrowfully, all flinched at the memory of their death and of their fiery rebirth. Some e’en had a shimmery tear in an eye at the loss of their innocence.
Obsidian Golems performed their own tests with crudey-crude, capturing normal people and exposing them to varying degrees of Dark Iron, both in single exposures to long-
term deposits. A single drop was all it took to weld someone to Dark Iron. That was a given. The maximum a fresh-faced man or woman could handle in a single sitting was just shy of an ounce, and those that survived were both cursed and lucky; that much Iron all at once had a tendency to burn right through a person’s soul, leaving nothing but an Ironed-up shell.
That volume –an ounce- held true over the course of an hour, a day, a week. Tolerance needed to be built up over the course of decades. The fact that Nicked Jimmy had voluntarily spent that much on a fish was nearly inconceivable! He must’ve been close to grey and saturated with madness to do such a thing.
“Then …” Agnethea tried to wrap her head around what Garth was saying. It wasn’t working. A quarter-gallon. That was more than many gearheads saw in a lifetime. “Then what is … what’s your real problem, if not enslavement to Barnabas?”
Some niggling hint insisted the armor played a part in things, yet she couldn’t trace the damn thought down; her mind was still frankly blown that she sat across from a man who had downed so much Kingsblood that he hadn’t instantly been transformed into greasy black ash floating to the ground!
What was Master Nickels, really and truly?
Outsider, aye, everyone who was anyone as knew the tale of Specter knew that bit. Those who’d heard early versions also knew of the implants he’d claimed to own, though that’d been dropped fairly on when it’d been proven than perhaps one in thousand e’en knew what ‘implants’ were or what they meant.
Garth gazed at Agnethea thoughtfully. She was eleven thousand years old. She’d harvested thousands, if not tens of thousands of gearheads to build her freaky-deaky castle. If there was anyone in Arcade City capable of figuring out a way to rid him quickly and efficiently of the Dark Iron still trying to hook it’s way into him fully, it was her.
Still. Trust came hard. If he showed her what his problem was, if she did anything wrong while he was exposed, if she did anything to provoke Specter with that particular element of control absent …