City of Iron and Dust

by J. P. Oakes

  From where he stands, Skart sees each piece as part of the whole. A great symphony is filling his head, every instrument playing in harmony.

  However, before he’s done, he needs to confirm that one tune is being played where the others can’t hear it.

  “Excuse me,” he says to the group. “There’s something I have to attend to.”

  Brumble arches a thorny eyebrow but doesn’t say anything as he retreats to the shadows at the back of the basement. An old abandoned office sits there. A plastic barrow-marker pinned above the doorway shows that it once belonged to a sidhe—a child or grandchild of the old grave guard who fell during Mab’s sacking of Avalon. The door itself has been recently oiled and it opens without complaint or sound. On a dust-mired desk sits a new rotary phone. He makes his way to it, knocking aside piles of old paper and tearing cobwebs. He dials carefully, one eye on the door, then puts the receiver to his ear.

  On the fifth ring, someone picks up.

  “Took your time,” Skart says. His pulse is coming quicker now. “Do you have it?”

  There is a hesitation. Skart does not like that hesitation.

  “No.” The voice on the other end of the line is missing its usual brisk efficiency. It is… embarrassed.

  “What do you mean ‘no’?” Skart spits.

  “I mean… I do not have the package. Another party interceded.”

  “Another party?” Skart has become an incredulous echo.

  “We gave chase,” says the voice, “but they…” It breaks off. “They eluded us.”

  Skart’s ability to repeat outrageous statements fails him. He gawps wordlessly into the phone. Everything he has done. Everything he has set into motion…

  “How are you fixing this?” he says finally.

  “My team is already scouring the city.”

  “You have an estimated time of retrieval?” Skart struggles to keep his voice low. The last thing he needs is someone walking in to check on him now.

  “Everyone on my team is good at their jobs,” the voice says, “but we lack leads. Whoever did this left few traces. We don’t think it was a known player. Perhaps—”

  “You incompetent asshole!” The words burst out of Skart. He can’t control them. Because this cannot fail. Because if it does then years of planning, and years of making everything certain, are for naught.

  “I might remind you of who I am,” says the voice. Anger has erased its embarrassment.

  “I know exactly who you are,” Skart says. “I hired you because of who you are. I hired you because this job cannot have loose ends, and you assured me you could snip them cleanly. And yet, here I am listening to you try to make excuses about being unable to handle something as simple as a fucking courier run.”

  The silence that follows froths with fury.

  “Screw it,” Skart says. “I’m coming. I can no longer be certain that you and your team won’t fail me.”

  “I assure you—” the voice says.

  “You assured me you’d have the Dust by now,” Skart says, “but look where we are.” He slams the phone down.

  He stands in the center of the room breathing heavily. He feels old. He feels the weight of the years in his bones. The black growths beneath his skin. He rubs his arms, shakes himself. He has no time for self-pity. He has to leave. He has to fix this. Everything hinges on it.

  The only exit, though, is through the heart of the rebellion he is supposed to be heading up.

  When he leaves the office, he has arranged his features into a paternal smile. He walks in a straight line, and heads directly for the basement exit. He does not rush. He nods at the fae he passes, the smile still fixed on his lips. He passes a table with three brownies bent over it, all of them examining a map and talking about contingencies. He passes a second where someone is wiring up phones. At a third, sidhe and pixies are laying out magazines of ammunition ready for returning troops looking to restock. He smiles at them all.

  Halfway there…

  “Skart?” It’s Brumble’s deep voice. “Skart, where are you going?”

  He doesn’t have an answer. He doesn’t give one. He pretends he hasn’t heard her deafening boom.

  “Is everything OK?” She’s hurrying after him.

  He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do. Everything was so well planned—but this wasn’t part of the plan.

  She catches up, puts a hand on his shoulder. He stops and turns, feigning puzzlement or concern. Whatever he can transmute his panic into right now.

  “Is everything alright?” he asks her.

  She blinks. “I just asked you the same thing. Where are you going? And why do you look like you’re going to be killed when you get there?”

  He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. Lies fail him.

  She knits her brows, wrinkling her face until she is no prettier than a Spriggan. And how long, he wonders, will it be before her concern becomes suspicion?

  But just because he can’t lie, he suddenly realizes, it doesn’t mean he has to tell her all of the truth.

  “I’m terrified,” he says in hushed tones, keeping the smile fixed on his mouth. “It’s all going to fall apart, and I am too old and weak to take that.”

  Brumble stares at him. His whole future pivots on this moment. Then her eyes fill with sympathy and she puts her other massive hand on his other shoulder and holds him. “Oh, Skart,” she whispers. “No, it’s not. You’re not. This is our night. This is happening.”

  He lets out just a sliver of his panic: a thin laugh. “I know. I know.” He’s hyperventilating slightly, but the lies are loosening on his tongue. “But I just… I need a minute. I need air. I can’t let anyone see me like this.”

  Brumble nods, her eyes full of understanding. “Of course.”

  He nods. “Cover for me?” If he doesn’t have lies, hopefully she does.

  “Of course.” She nods again. “We’ve got this, Skart. Your plan is going to work. It’s rock solid.”

  He takes a deep quavering breath. “I’ll be back. As soon as…” He reaches for something. “…when I’m steady.”

  Another moment, and then finally she releases him. He does his best not to scurry away. To be slow and steady. But it’s hard knowing how wrong Brumble is. It’s hard knowing that his plan is already in tatters.

  Edwyll

  Edwyll stands outside Knull’s old bedroom for a long time. The poster for an old ogre metal band is still tacked up to cover the spot where, seven years ago, Knull punched the door and broke three of his fingers. Now, part of him wants to fling the door open, march in, seize the brick of Dust, and hurl the whole mess with all the danger and temptation it holds out into the street. It shouldn’t be here. It wasn’t fair to put it here.

  And then there are the other, darker temptations too: to use it himself; to buy his own power.

  He would spend the money more wisely than Knull. He’s sure of that. He would use it to do better things. To get his parents out of this hovel. To help the other fae in this neighborhood. To empower them, enable them. He could help lift a whole street out of poverty, help the other fae see what they could achieve if they banded together. He could…

  He couldn’t sell it. He doesn’t know the fae Knull does. And even if he could they’d be more likely to steal from him, the same way Knull had stolen the Dust to begin with. And even if he were to succeed, the foundations of the whole enterprise would be septic, would be based on theft, and addiction, and sucking more and more fae down into the mire of trying to recapture the past, one snort at a time.

  He shakes himself. A tremor that runs through his whole body. He chose to be different from Knull a long time ago. He’s not going to revisit that decision now. He has picked his own path out of the Fae Districts. A harder path, perhaps, than Knull’s, but a cleaner one.

  Art. Art will save him. And if he does it right, it will save other fae without leaving a stain on his conscience.

  He turns his back on the bedroom, h
eads back down the hall to the living room. He came here to get something. It’s sitting on the soot-stained mantelpiece, no more than six inches tall, its clumsy branches pointing to the ceiling. The porcelain White Tree. He picks it up, slips it into his messenger bag among the paint tubes and spray cans.

  “Eddy?” his dad calls from the couch. His mother has started to snore.

  “I’ll be back in a few days, Dad. OK?”

  “You’re a good son,” his dad says, and closes his eyes again.

  If I do it right, Edwyll thinks, I can save them.

  He heads out into the Iron City, and the night. He feels skittish and high-strung out on the streets, eyes searching for white-haired half-fae killers. The presence of the brick of Dust back at the house doesn’t help either. There’s too much danger on all sides.

  His heightened nerves let him sense the change in the city’s atmosphere more quickly than he might otherwise. He hesitates outside the local printing press, head up like a fox scenting for fresh garbage. It seems to him that the Fae District’s typical slow slump into sleep is inverted tonight. Instead of a few staggering drunks mumbling to themselves, he can see fae scurrying back and forth, yelling and calling to each other.

  He thinks that perhaps some party somewhere got out of hand. A crowd high on Dust charging through the streets, remaking the world in small stupid ways, inviting eventual reprisals when the goblins find out.

  The revelers are coming closer now, he realizes, and he shrinks back into shadows, adrenaline still sparking, images of the bloodbath in the bar still playing in front of his eyes. The crowd’s calls come clearer. A brash jumble of excitement and anger. Above him, the building’s façade peers down grimly.

  He should have brought some of Knull’s Dust, he thinks. Just a pinch. Just for protection. Lila is always telling him to be more practical.

  The group comes running down the street whooping. Hooded jackets and kerchiefs mask their features. Guns and clubs are brandished. He braces himself, grabs in his bag for something to use in defense, finds that he is—absurdly—holding a fountain pen like a sword. These are not the circumstances, he is sure, under which it is mightier.

  But the group doesn’t surround or menace him. Instead, someone tries to high five him.

  “Brother!” one fae shouts, a shyad—a dryad-sidhe mix—from the look of her, skin a pale gray, whorls on her cheeks lending her an unworldly beauty. “Tonight you are liberated! Tonight you are a free fae in a free city. Tomorrow you will be king!”

  She bows and somehow it doesn’t feel like mockery. Edwyll half-bows back. The mob cheers.

  “Now,” the shyad says, “if I could ask you to step aside. You are on the very threshold of the building we desire to visit.”

  “Fuck yeah!” shouts a gnome from the back of the crowd, and a few others laugh.

  Edwyll doesn’t know what is going on, and he is still very aware of their weapons, but he doesn’t feel any sense of threat from this group.

  “All yours,” he says, and steps away. He pauses a few yards back, curious as to what such a group could want with the local printing press. He sees four of the fae up at the door, holding something heavy. He peers, then gasps as they throw a small steel battering ram into the door lock.

  “But this—” he starts to say, but then they do it again. The lock cracks loudly. The door flies open.

  But this is our factory, he had been about to say. Because he does feel a sense of ownership over it. This is the printing press where half of his friends work, where most of their parents have worked, where his own parents pick up odd jobs when they’re together enough or desperate enough to leave the house. Where he has helped move the massive reams of paper when the collective hasn’t had enough work for him, and when the bars don’t need someone extra on the taps or washing dishes in the kitchen. He has grown up breathing this factory’s fumes, and watching its ink stain skin and streets. The dull iron ache of its heavy machinery in his gums is as familiar as the rumble of hunger in his belly.

  Of course, the factory is not really theirs—it belongs to some Goblin House, and green-skinned bosses occasionally come to visit and berate everyone, and cut pay—but it has defined the rhythms of the neighborhood that he has thought of as home for so long. When it is busy, they all are. When it suffers through hard times, they all do. And now this gang of fae is violating it.

  The fae seem to care nothing for his feelings, though. They pour through the ragged doorway, still whooping. Two hold out cans of red spray paint as they go, staining the frame like a wound. He stares after them. The whole incident has probably taken less than a minute. He is not sure what to do about it. What he can do about it.

  Use it, Lila would tell him. He tries to heed the lesson.

  He is about to step away, about to decidedly not get involved and keep himself clean of whatever chaos is about to happen, when a sound erupts from within the confines of the factory: a sharp, barking retort. He jumps at the suddenness of it, but can make no sense of it.

  It comes again—an angry, violent sound. Then again. A rising cacophony of small explosions, each one cracking through the night.

  He was curious too long, he thinks. As soon as he saw these fae coming he should have started to move away.

  The shyad appears in the doorway, her back to him, swaying wildly. Still Edwyll can’t put it together. Is she drunk?

  Then she collapses, and Edwyll sees that her whole chest is sheeted with blood. It pools around her in a slow ebbing tide.

  Someone else appears in the shadowy room beyond the doorway and the body. Edwyll hears more small explosions, sees sharp flares of light. The figure twists and spasms. Chips of brick fly from the frame, stinging his skin.

  Gunshots, he realizes. I am hearing gunshots.

  Bullets spatter against the doorframe. They whine through the air around him.

  Then he is running, hands over his head, bellowing in shock and alarm. Then he is searching desperately for cover.

  Granny Spregg

  Granny Spregg clatters through the halls of House Spriggan. Her cane taps and clacks. Thacker scurries after her. Everything feels very familiar. Everything, she knows, has changed.

  “Knock,” she commands when she and Thacker arrive at the door to House Spriggan Central Command. “Beat on it like your daddy beat on you.”

  Thacker grimaces. But in Granny Spregg’s opinion, if he doesn’t want her to use his personal information against him, then he should learn to hold his drink better.

  Thacker knocks—loud and long. After a moment, a uniformed goblin answers.

  “Madame Spregg?”

  “Could you tell me,” she asks, sweet as a saccharine-coated dagger, “is my son still here?” She beams. “I have a gift for him.”

  The goblin nods. “Major General Privett is still—”

  She pushes past this minor nuisance in a uniform and surveys the bustling room. Privett stands at its center, gesticulating like a Dust-addled semaphore messenger. General Callart nods and smiles along, waiting to get back to doing his job properly.

  It is Callart who sees Granny Spregg first. He clears his throat. Finally, Privett turns.

  This is the moment she has been waiting for. The expression on his face. The widening of his eyes and the contracting of his pupils. The slight tremor in his jaw. This makes the throbbing pain in her punctured hand worthwhile. This sends shivers running through her old body.

  “Mother,” he manages.

  “I brought,” she tells him with a growing smile, “a peace offering.” She gestures for Thacker to step forward. Her attendant bows his head and proffers a silver tray. On it is a single glass of port.

  He stares, transfixed by the glass.

  “I feel that we left on bad terms. I wanted to make it up to you.” She pushes the tray closer to him. “Please, drink.”

  He hesitates. The whole room is staring.

  “Mother—” he starts.

  “Shhh,” she hushes him. “No n
eed to say a word.”

  She has them all in the palm of her hand. Privett takes the glass. The tremble in his jaw has reached his hand.

  General Callart clears his throat. He, she has to remind herself, has gained his position through merit rather than through the station his parents held when they fucked. “I hate to ask this, Madame Spregg,” he says, “but are you entirely sure this port is still good? It looks remarkably… purple.”

  Granny Spregg smiles at him. At her son. “An unusual grape,” she says, “but I believe Privett is familiar with it.” She holds Privett’s gaze. “Please,” she tells him, “drink up.”

  Privett gets the glass halfway to his lips but doesn’t seem to have the strength to lift it any higher.

  And the whole room stares. And they all know that she has won.

  All the aches in her old body seem to fade.

  “Madame Spregg,” General Callart cuts in again, “when you were here earlier, weren’t you requesting the assistance of a division of soldiers?”

  She pauses before she answers. Because why shouldn’t she luxuriate in this?

  “Oh yes,” she says finally. “I believe I was.”

  “Major General Privett,” says General Callart, “given the recent change in circumstances we were just discussing, perhaps we could spare your mother a few troops?”

  Privett is still staring at the glass of port. “What?” he says.

  “Your mother,” says Callart. “We could spare her some troops now, couldn’t we?”

  Privett’s eyes stay on the glass for another beat. Then finally he looks up. “Erm,” he manages. He looks at his mother. She adopts her best withering look, the one that always reduced him to tears when he was a child. Which, of course, he still is.

  “Yes,” Privett says. “Yes, whatever you say.”

  Everyone is still staring, and the little shit knows it.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” he manages. And then he sweeps from the room, as imperious as a school child all dressed up in Daddy’s clothes. He’s still carrying the untouched glass of port with him.

  The door swings shut. General Callart smiles. He bows slightly. “Madame Spregg,” he says, “I believe the room is yours.”