Dark Iron King Volume I: Thy King's Will Be Done (Unreal Universe Book 1)

by Lee Bond

  Dom pulled Armand up short, patted his horse affectionately on the neck. Then he turned his head around as far as it would go so he could confront his ordinarily semi-rational partner better. “You have a better chance of having words with Our Missing King than you do of driving Armand, Chevril Pointillier, and I mean that most sincerely. And,” here he put his hand on Chevy’s chest, “there ain’t nothing wrong with my fucking horse.”

  Then Dominic shoved his partner and friend off the backside.

  Chevril landed in a clatter of arms and legs, mechanical longcoat sounding like a dropped drawer full of silverware. It took him a long minute of fussing and squabbling with himself to get up off the ground properly, and by the time he had his feet under him, Dom was off his horse and staring critically at an empty patch of ground.

  “Oy!” Chevy walked up and smacked his partner on the back of the head. “What you do that for?”

  “We’re here.” Dom pointed a gauntleted finger at the empty patch of ground.

  “Where’s ‘here’?” The older Gearman looked around. There wasn’t anything exciting going on here.

  “If you had your own Book, you’d know where ‘here’ is.” Dom started moving towards the center of the campsite.

  “Oh, I get wot this is.” Chevy followed his partner, amazed that after all their years of working together on cases, Dominic still wouldn’t let it go. “You’re pissed because I won’t get a Book. And now you’re all high and mighty on account of you have a Book and I don’t.”

  “Actually, Chevy, I’m pissed because you don’t have a Book and keep asking me questions that you should already know the answers to.” Dom pulled his Book loose of its cage and flipped it open. “People talk.”

  “What do they talk about?” Chevy strolled up and took a look at the Book over Dom’s right shoulder. It was amazing thing, the geared tome. The things it could do, like pulling knowledge from the very air … quite impressive, if a bit … showy for his liking.

  Dom snapped the book shut and elbowed Chevy in the gut. “They talk about how they think you think I’m some sort of fucking librarian! As how when we’re partnered, you act like you don’t know nothing, but you do! You’re the only Gearman I know as doesn’t have a Book these days, yet you’re one of the only Gearmen to’ve done the things you done! Now all that’s gone, ‘less they can find that damn brain cube. Which, by the way, is unlikely owing to how explosive your horse went. Order a factory fresh horse, my friend, and be done wi’ it!”

  Chevy shrugged. “All that brainwork is hard on a fellow, Dom. That’s all. When I’m on me own, I do a lot of thinking, sure enough, but I don’t want a Book because if I do get one, then all that thinking I do to keep myself occupied will be replaced by, well, by the Book. And I shall be buggered through the ear if I get a reg’lar horse. Them Barnmen can damn well sift through clods of dirt for another fortnight before I e’en begin to think on giving up.”

  “Well.” Dominic snapped the Book back into place on his chest. “Why don’t you tell me what you see, then we’ll compare it to what my Book has to say.”

  Chevril Pointillier sighed miserably. Of all the partners he’d had in service to King and Crown, Dom was the least interested in old school detective work.

  “All right, laddie, as you ask.” Chevy pulled a pair of glasses from an inner pocket, glared at Dominic for a long moment, daring the younger Gearman to say anything about the antique spectacles. When he got nothing but a bemused glance and a rolling gesture to begin, Chevy did just that.

  “I spy with my little eye…”

  ***

  “Something ain’t right.” Chadsik said to Miss Bliss, whom he’d propped up against a windowsill so he could use both hands on the machinery operating the huge telescope. “Something ain’t right at all!”

  Way back in the day, when he’d been a wee lad and had shown more than a passing interest in the King’s greatest work, that wondrous Dome of Gears, King Blake had had the Observation Tower constructed so he could more easily show his young charge something wonderful.

  And what a wonder it was. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of miles of gears, cogs, pinions, sprockets. Pistons and cylinders and turbines and all manner of things that clicked or clacked, spun or ticked or tocked. They were all up there, in The Dome, whirling and twirling together in perfect, wondrous harmony. Some of the gears were hundreds of miles across, tremendously massive beasts of metal that could just barely be made out from the ground down below. Others were small as Miss Bliss’ smallest fingernail, a teeny tiny sprocket that spun madly, madly, madly on.

  The King had said in one of his more relaxed moments that The Dome was waiting, was capable of doing one thing and one thing only, and that it was going to be the most amazing thing anyone had ever seen, had ever done, had ever dreamed of.

  Young Chad, incapable of recognizing a moment that should be left well enough alone, had pressed the King on what the amazing thing was.

  There followed a truly spectacular beating and the end of their private trips to the Observatory.

  Miss Bliss asked what could possibly be wrong with Dome, pointing out the next second that the machinery behind it had been working flawlessly for somewhere in the neighborhood of eternity.

  Chad fiddled with the controls of the telescope. After so long unused, the mechanisms were sluggish and slow to respond, but Chad intuitively knew there was something wrong with The Dome after having taken a long, thoughtful look at what’d been on the old-fashioned viewing plates.

  “Well,” Chad began, strong-arming one of the more recalcitrant brass joysticks into motion, “it’s like this, right? Me old Da, him who is King, took me up ‘ere upon occasion, right? Fuck me awkwardly, is this fucking fing rusted or summink? Christ ate ‘is own cracker.”

  Miss Bliss suggested he got on with the explanation.

  “Right, right.” Chad flashed a grin of triumph at the dodgy old joystick when whatever had been obstructing it’s easy motion disappeared. He started in on the other one. “Well, as I was sayin’ before I lost my temper, me old Da was showin’ me The Dome. All sorts of it, all over the inside of Arcade City, yeah? Kept goin’ on an’ on about ‘ow it really was one giant apparatus. Biggest one in the Universe, ‘e said once or twice. Fuck you, you stupid twat-stick, fuckin’ move already!”

  Chad looked around for something to pry the second joystick loose from its moorings. He spied a long, claw-footed pry bar used to pull up the heavy brass plates of the floor; the King had used it once upon a long time ago to show Chad the inner working of the Observation tower. Chad remembered how the brass and ironworks had gleamed, all fresh and new and shiny like freshly minted ideas, how King Blake had been just as proud of a simple collection of machines that spun a big telescope three-hundred sixty degrees as he were of The Dome.

  Of course, all them memories were total shit. King Blake had exploited the fuck out of a much younger, infinitely stupid Chadsik al-Taryin.

  Chad grabbed hold of the heavy pry bar and went back to the reluctant joystick. “Now, one of the things ‘e let slip was …”

  ***

  “You’re making all this up.” Dominic couldn’t keep his disbelief to himself any longer. He’d spent the last three-quarters of an hour watching his semi-regular partner walk around the campsite, jumping and pretending to fight people and … well, all manner of weirdness that quite honestly belonged in a Punch and Judy show.

  “I am not.” Chevy insisted firmly. It was these younger ones. Booktech had only been around for about a thousand or so years, a direct necessity as the population of older and therefore far more powerful gearheads and wardogs grew. He’d come to the post of Gearman without one, and like as not –no matter how fascinated he was of late with Dom’s Book- he’d die rather than own one. The brain he’d been born with was the only thing he needed to do his thinking.

  “You’re telling me,” Dom threw his hands in the air, exasperated beyond all measure of proper behavior, “that
you claim to’ve figured out everything, just by looking? When you were only a short time ago confused as to where we was?”

  Chevy crossed his arms and nodded, this time smugly. The younger generation. It was all Book. No detectiving. “I do. Ain’t no claim, neither.”

  “This is because I won’t let you drive Armand, isn’t it?” Dom toed some blackened bits of charcoal out of the firepit. The existence of a fire was the only thing he, Dom, was willing to admit this partner had hit right on the mark thus far. Everything else was an old Gearman dancing about a crime scene like a … like a … like a spastic.

  “How about this.” Chevy suggested diplomatically. “We start off slow, from the beginning, you with your Book in your hand. We do it step by step, right? I say a thing, you ask Book. If I’m … more than ninety percent right when we’re done, I get to drive Armand and then you can bloody well see that your horse’s arse is too small with your own arse.”

  A dry, sarcastic look on his face, Dom pulled his Book free. “And what do I get when you fail? You could’ve picked a lower percentile, Chevy. If you get eighty-nine point nine nine percent right, you still fail. You sure you don’t want to lower your chance?”

  “Nope.” Chevy smiled haughtily. “An’ if I am wrong, I will get a Book.”

  Oh, well, that was the perfect bet! Dominic had been trying to force Chevy into getting a Book for nearly twenty years. The man had to move forward with the times! Once he got accustomed to using Booktech, why, the next thing he’d be looking to do was getting his clockwork longcoat upgraded to something newer.

  Dom rubbed his hands together excitedly. This could very well be a new beginning for Chevril Pointillier. And –more importantly- the end of the teasing that he, Dom, got whenever he ran into other Gearmen.

  “Where do you want to start?” Dom asked as he opened his Book to the appropriate page, loving as he always did the moment the ink started flowing across the amber colored paper.

  “Easy peasy stuff first, mate, always.” Chevy rolled his head around his neck and pointed to the heavy indents left in the soft leaves. “We can agree this were a smith camp, right?”

  “Obvious don’t win you no points.” Dom tsked. “Not a gaggle in the world travels this heavy. Saw that right off meself.”

  “Yes, well, what ain’t obvious to you, son, is that this smith camp belonged to none other than Barnabas hisself.” Chevy laughed when that caught his friend’s attention and nodded knowingly when Dom peeked at what Book was telling him. “Ole Barnabas been a smith for a damn long time, longer than any other out there. Most of ‘em fall prey sooner or later to greedy crews or natural disaster. Why, once, I remember I was investigatin’ the death of old Mister Smith, this portly, fat fella from all the way down south. Went missin’ and no one could find ‘im. Turns out he got et by a troll.”

  “A troll.” Dom demanded flatly. “An actual troll. Ain’t trolls no more. The King decided he didn’t like them eating people all the time when they couldn’t pay the toll on them bridges. Weren’t there something about gearheads killing them all the time?”

  “Oh aye. Gearheads’d kill ‘em all right, but trolls, see, they were like them as were doin’ the killin’. Kept comin’ back stronger, just like gearheads with their Kingsblood, except without the crudey-crude. Started causin’ a lot of problems, wandering away from them bridges. Started charging Dark Iron, some of them did.” Chevy chuckled, lost in the mists of reminiscence. He reckoned there were still a few old trolls out and about. Old things like that –old things like him- well, they didn’t always die straightaway. “But anyways, we digress. What does Book say?”

  “Well, Book does in fact say this area was camped by Barnabas, but you, my friend,” Dom stabbed an accusing finger at his partner, “ain’t said how you know.”

  “Could be a few different fings. Could be this neck of Arcade City is frequented by three smiths. One is, naturellement, Barnabas. Then there is Lady Tinkerbell, who is just a peach and a friendly lass if there ever was one. Nice boobs. Lastly, there is Cranky Old Jim, who turns into a righteous crybaby if gearheads so much as say boo. Now,” Chevy couldn’t help but love the look of growing irritation on Dom’s face, “Now, Tinkerbell, she’s further up North right now dealing with fortification enhancements for, if I recall, Westinghouse Estate. Some damnfool crew or other riled up a pack of Shaggy Men and they’ve moved out of their warrens ‘neath the ground and have, for some damn reason, fallen in love with Westinghouse flesh, so it hain’t her who camped here. Cranky Old Jim is currently banged up in the nick for attacking one of the last four Gearman call boxes in this here neck o’ the woods. Don’t matter the blasted things don’t work and we won’t come runnin’ even if they did, hey? It’s the principle. Which leaves?”

  “Barnabas.” Dominic was impressed, to be fair, but … “But that’s just knowing things that anyone can know if they read the updates. You …”

  “I …” Chevril motioned for Dom to come closer. When the younger man got close enough, Chevy indicated the depth of the imprints left behind by the blacksmith equipment that’d been parked too close to the leafy bed of the forest. “I know that Barnabas travels with about seven times the weight of any other blacksmith in the entirety of Arcade City, Dom, and that he uses a particular type of carry-box. His got wheels, don’t you know, on the bottom of each carry-box, or more specific, treads as they used Easterly long afore you was even a twinkle in yer Granda’s eyes. Ol’ Barnabas, he found sketches or summat like ‘e uses on his way ‘round the ring, built ‘em first chance he could. Well worth the effort, I say. Saves the man loads of effort hauling all that junk o’ his about. And what do you see here?”

  Dominic didn’t need to look. Book was already tracing out the deep grooves left behind by the metal treads and pointing that the likelihood of an Eastern smith being this far west bordered on the virtually impossible. Book assigned a one hundred percent chance that this was a Barnabas campsite on evidence of tread pattern alone.

  “All right, then,” Dominic admitted, daunted but not done, “how’d you come at who was here, then, if it weren’t from them tread marks?”

  ***

  “No,” Chad insisted doggedly of Miss Bliss’ disbelief as he wrestled with the fussy controls, “I ain’t makin’ this up at all! My Old Dad swears this Dome can change. Well, not in so many words. ‘e said it were capable of doing summink well amazing, and well, wot it is doin’ now ain’t amazing at all, right? Been doin’ this since the dawn of time itself, seems like. No,” he said seriously, “wot I fink it’s supposed to do is change shape. It’s the only fing that makes sense.”

  Miss Bliss’ look suggested that Chad was making very little sense at all.

  Chad hooted triumphantly as the pry bar finally managed to jostle the joystick free and clear. He propped the heavy metal bar to one side of the control panel and started moving the telescope around. The images on the old brass and glass view plates began swimming with different views of The Dome. “Don’t matter wot you fink, luvverly Miss Bliss, wot matter’s is wot I is goin’ ter be findin’ out."

  To say that The Dome was vast was to somehow fail to describe its genuine immensity. The men and women who lived in Arcade City had no true appreciation for the blasted thing, and all because they’d been given no real opportunity to take it in. Those who lived in Estates closest to the Geared Doors had a somewhat better inkling of the awesomeness of The Dome, but only just; the mechanics spiraling away from each Door were –according to Dad- the least complex of all the machines that made up The Dome.

  No, the further you went up, the more insanely and fiendishly complicated and interwoven everything became. Chad remembered losing hours staring at random sections of the geared clockwork that was Heaven for Arcade City denizens, tracing out patterns with tiny little fingers on the view plates. Where there were just huge gears spinning smaller cogs that in turn drove pistons that moved turbines down below, down where every day men and women could look on and wonder, up
above, where no one who didn’t have a telescope couldn’t see … there, there the magic happened.

  A sea of cogs and gears spinning madly, a veritable Mandelbrot maze of infinitely ticking and tocking machines, counting down time, waiting to change …

  And it was off somehow. Chad had seen that the moment he and Miss Bliss had taken their first peek at the view plate. It was minute. Too small for anyone who hadn’t all but memorized the eternal motion of The Dome, but Chad, now he was back in Arcade City, Chad had known right away that somewhere along the Heavens, something had changed.

  Miss Bliss asked what that change could be.

  Chad guffawed over his shoulder at Wee Miss Bliss. “Don’t know yet, do I? ‘s why I is lookin’, right? I reckon, ah, there it is! The very apex of The Dome Itse… fuck me sideways, would you fuckin’ take a fuckin’ look at that fuckin’ fing! Christ!”

  ***

  Dominic looked over at Armand, a bit of sadness in him. He was going to have to let Chevril drive his horse. He couldn’t believe it. Bad enough he’d been forced to give the other man a ride on the back, but the foolish bet was going to have him on the back end of Armand.

  Chevy was a genius. He didn’t need Book. He had the wealth of his experiences, and Dom was being taken to school like a reluctant five year old being pulled by his ear. Book –who’d never been more insufferable than right now- was keeping tally of his partner’s ‘score’. Ninety-eight percent. Chevy, who was busy squatting by where the fire used to be, staring at the ground between his armored feet like it was the most interesting thing in the world, had lost a few marks for getting the time of the assault wrong. By five minutes.

  “You done for, old man?” Dom hooted derisively, though his heart wasn’t in it. “No shame in admitting you can’t tell which crew got done in.”

  Chevy grinned. “I knew who got done in almost right away, before I even knew which blacksmith they’d tried to rob.”

  Dom waited, an irate grimace on his face. When Chevy went back to poking the dirt with his fingers, the younger Gearman shouted, “Well, let’s hear it, then, shall we? Who did it, and who got it done to them?”