City of Iron and Dust

by J. P. Oakes

  He bursts from the furnace’s questionable cover and fires his pistol—his weapon of last resort—twice in the enemy’s general direction, feeling the gun wrenching at his wrist. He dumps the chain—useless at range, and making his aim even worse—then grabs Tharn by the collar, and heaves them both towards a crucible, one of the massive, ceramic-lined steel buckets that hang from chains set into tracks in the warehouse’s ceiling that the workers use to transport molten metal around the factory.

  More shots dance and spark on the floor around them. They crash into the crucible’s far side, setting it to swaying.

  “Shit!”

  Already three of the Fae Liberation Front are dead, their number cut from twenty-four to twenty-one. Jerrell was the first victim of the ambush. Then another—Colvin—had been shot in the neck. Colvin and Jerrell had always been friends and it seemed almost as if seeing Jerrell go, Colvin had leapt into the next great adventure to stay beside him.

  Then there had been a mad scramble for cover, and for even the slightest sense of what was happening. “Red Caps!” someone had yelled. Bee still doesn’t know who, but they must have decided to risk taking another look to confirm the presence of the distinctive red berets because there had been a scream a moment later, and Bee had seen the body fall, so that was the third down.

  Tharn still isn’t firing the machine gun, is still not doing anything but clutching it like a child with his blankie.

  “Shoot something!” Bee yells at him. He swings round the edge of the crucible and squeezes off a shot with his pistol. He ducks back into cover. Tharn stares at him uncomprehending.

  “Give me that.” Bee wrestles the machine gun from Tharn’s numb fingers. He presses his pistol into Tharn’s hands. “That still has twelve shots left,” he tells him.

  Bullets are still pinging against the crucible. Bee is terribly aware that it hangs a clear six inches off the floor. One bad ricochet and he’ll be hobbled for life.

  Tharn is still staring, still hyperventilating, still not fighting.

  “Just get in the crucible,” Bee tells him.

  “What?” Tharn stares at it wildly. The bucket is massive, eight or nine feet tall, more than half that across. At five-foot eight, Tharn isn’t going to make it in there on his own.

  “I’ll give you a boost,” Bee tries to explain.

  Tharn still doesn’t move.

  “Fight or get in the bucket!” Bee yells at him.

  A round sparks less than a foot from his boots. Bee grabs Tharn around the waist, hoists him up toward the crucible’s lip. Bullets spatter against its thick side. Tharn tumbles over, legs kicking. Bee doesn’t know how long the crucible’s walls will hold. He doesn’t know how painful it will be inside a bucket of cold steel. He doesn’t have time to think about it. He doesn’t have time to think about anything.

  He definitely doesn’t have time to think about how the thing he’s about to do is profoundly stupid.

  He steps out from behind the cover of the crucible.

  The goblins from House Red Cap don’t see him at first. They are too focused on the massive swinging target he just abandoned. They are lined up on the galleries overlooking the main factory floor where they have the fae pinned, are perched on walkways and steel gantries, while the fae try to find whatever cover they can, regardless of how much iron it contains. The goblins have rifles and pistols. They are raining down fire.

  Bee’s mind starts to catch up. In the moment’s pause, it threatens to have time to think.

  He braces the machine gun against his shoulder as best he can and squeezes the trigger.

  The gun kicks like a mule. His barrel flies upwards, bullets smashing into the factory ceiling. The noise is deafening in his ears—a steady chug-chug as the mechanism spews ammunition.

  He wrestles with the gun, heaves its bouncing barrel back down, and sweeps it back and forth across the upper walkways. He can’t see anything beyond the flare of the muzzle. He doesn’t know if anyone is shooting at him. He’s sure he’s as bright as the sun down here in the darkness. But this is all the plan he has. All he can do is wave the weapon back and forth and pray it buys someone else the time they need to figure out a better one.

  Adrenaline distorts time. Moments expand and contract. Life passes by in a stutter of near static images. Then finally the gun’s mechanism clicks—small and tinny after the monstrous roar of its barrel—and Bee is standing there, panting as if he just ran a mile, stupid as an ogre. Then he slams himself back behind the crucible’s cover.

  Silence. Or maybe he’s blown out his hearing. There’s a ringing in his right ear that won’t stop. His shoulder feels bruised and his legs are shaking in a way he can’t control. He thinks perhaps he’s going to throw up.

  “Tharn!” he bellows. “Tharn! I need more ammo! Give me a magazine! Come on! Come on!”

  He’s still shouting and clawing at the lip of the crucible when someone grabs him by the shoulder. He swings round, ready to smash the butt of the magazine into their face.

  Harretta flinches back. “It’s over,” she tells him when she seems sure he won’t strike her. “It’s all over. They’re on the run. You gunned down half of them. We won.”

  And with that Bee feels all the strength go from his legs, and he slumps to the floor.

  Jag

  In a street outside a different factory, silence has fallen. Metal has thundered and crashed around Jag. Dust has billowed. But now there is silence.

  Slowly, she picks herself up. The paper mill’s fire escape is a twisted ruin in the street. Bodies are a twisted ruin around it. Not all, though. And as the survivors begin to stir, sounds come back to the world. Some pick themselves up, coughing and spluttering. Others examine ragged cuts and broken ankles. Some just lie there and start to scream.

  Jag backs away. She doesn’t run. She doesn’t think she can. Maybe it’s for the best. She doesn’t draw attention to herself moving like this. Dust has painted her gray and brown so her skin and hair can’t give her away either. Her sharp features still can, however, so she keeps walking, one slow step after another.

  She waits for Sil to appear. She saw her dive into the factory, but she knows Sil is OK. Jag cannot truly consider otherwise. The idea that Sil will be there to catch her when she falls is one of the inviolable rules of her universe.

  “Get that bitch,” she hears one of the still-standing fae say. She almost flinches back, almost gives herself away, then realizes that the fae is pointing toward the ruined factory.

  “Where’s that other one?” someone replies.

  Jag presses into the shadows.

  All told, there are still fifteen or so fae on their feet. They pick up spilled weapons. Some grab jagged spars of wood broken free from the factory’s interior.

  Jag retreats further and further. She watches from a distance as the fae disappear into the darkness of the paper mill. Then she counts the seconds. She waits for Sil to emerge, dripping with their viscera. She knows this will happen.

  The street falls quiet. The whimpers of the injured fae seem oddly muffled in the slow-settling dust. Gradually, Jag feels her breath come under control. She’s OK. She has survived. Sil has saved her. Sil will be here in a moment.

  Then there’s a shout from the factory. Distant, but clear. “Oh shit, it’s—” and then the words are cut off sharply.

  Immediately, the street shudders beneath Jag’s feet. A bass rumble that rolls through the asphalt and shakes her knees. She looks around, trying to pinpoint the source. Then another boom comes, and then a third sharper cough of sound.

  Smoke suddenly billows from the paper mill’s windows. Glass and splintered shutters are blown from their frames. Then another coughing, cracking series of explosions. Flame follows the smoke.

  All of a sudden, the whole front of the paper mill seems to slump. Bricks spill into the street. Steel beams slide free from hidden moorings, and doorways blink shut. And then Jag stares in horror as the whole paper mill—all its contents,
and all those still within it—is transformed into nothing more than a smoking pile of broken rubble.

  9

  Making Plans Like They Matter

  Bee

  “This is fucked. It’s all so fucking fucked.”

  Tharn is still shaking. He’s pacing, staring wildly about the shadowed factory. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Leave?” Harretta stares at Tharn. “We just took this place. We can’t abandon it now.”

  The surviving members of the Fae Liberation Front are gathered about the pair. They all stand, stark as silhouettes in the middle of the factory floor. Their dead are still scattered around them.

  Bee is sitting with his back to the crucible. He is watching them all. He is smelling blood and oil. He is trying to figure out what he thinks.

  “This was an ambush!” Tharn shouts. “They knew we were going to be here!” He waves his arms wildly. “They know everything. The revolution is over. We have to go to ground.”

  Harretta stalks toward Tharn. “Fae died for this, you coward! They paid for this with their lives while you hid in a bucket!” Bee isn’t sure if Harretta knows that she’s crying or not. He doesn’t know if she knows she’s still holding her gun as she screams into Tharn’s face. “And now you want to say that sacrifice is worth nothing?”

  Tharn doesn’t back down, although Bee isn’t sure it’s courage that’s propping his friend up. “We’ll all die,” Tharn says, “if we stick to the plan.”

  “You—!” Harretta shouts at the same time that Tharn goes to say, “They—”

  Bee thinks he’s figured out what he thinks, though.

  “Shut up, both of you.”

  Eyes flick to him as he uses the machine gun to lever himself up off the ground. The gun is now a prop with power, he knows. He has bought himself some authority with it.

  “Tharn’s right,” he says into the space between Tharn and Harretta’s rage. “This was an ambush. The goblins do know what we’re doing. Staying here is foolish.”

  Harretta opens her mouth. He holds up a hand to forestall her. “Harretta’s right too. We can’t slink away,” he says. “We can’t let Jerrell’s life mean nothing. Or Colvin’s. Or Tabbat’s.” In the thirty seconds of respite since the last bullet rang out, Bee has had time to stare at the third body splayed out on the factory floor, has had time to think about all the times he and the brixie clashed, and collaborated, and laughed, and drank, and sang, and hoped, and feared. Has had time to feel nausea crawling up his esophagus like a beast trying to escape.

  “We know the goblins knew we’d be here,” he says, “but we don’t know what else they know. We don’t know how they know it. We don’t know who else is in danger. But we can find out. The Red Caps are running right now. They’re maybe a block away. We can follow. We can warn the rest of the rebellion.”

  The others stare at him.

  “Follow them?” Tharn says. Bee still can’t hear the courage in his voice.

  “We were told to stay here,” Harretta says.

  Bee looks to Harretta. “Told to?” he asks her. “And here I was thinking we were rebels.”

  She looks at him for a moment, chews her tongue. Then she shakes her head. Bee grins.

  “To the vote?” she says.

  It’s only one against, and even Tharn comes with them as they start to hunt.

  Jag

  Jag stares. And Jag stares. And Jag stares.

  Sil is inside the paper mill. The paper mill that is not a paper mill anymore. Because now, the paper mill is a pile of rubble. It is clouds of dust and bursts of flame. Now, it is a ruin and it has ruined all the lives that were inside it.

  Just now, it has ruined Jag’s life.

  Jag doesn’t remember when she first met Sil. She doesn’t remember what they told her when they first introduced her to this older child with her white hair and strange pale green skin, and whether she was excited or afraid. She cannot remember a time before Sil at all. And they are not exactly close despite all her efforts. It’s impossible to get close to Sil, after what has been done to her. Sil cannot think of herself, Jag suspects, as someone, or even something, that others can approach. And yet she is always there. She has always been there, ever since Jag can remember. Sil is like a limb. The idea that she can be lost makes no sense to Jag.

  And yet, also, the idea that Sil has survived this disaster. This detonation. This ruin…

  She was the one who asked Sil to come along tonight. She was the one who sought Sil out. And perhaps that decision saved Jag’s own life, but, for Sil…

  Jag takes two steps towards the paper mill—towards what’s left of it. She stops. She can’t get any closer to the consequences of her own decisions.

  She has to be alive, Jag thinks. Thinking anything else has been unthinkable for so long. But what else can she think staring at this mess?

  The back half of the paper mill is still standing. Pieces of it keep collapsing, tumbling down into the fires below.

  Jag takes another step forward. She stops again.

  What can she do?

  And of course, the answer is nothing. Because that is the answer to her whole life. What does her father trust her with? Nothing. What does her mother care for beside staring obliviously into an alcohol-hazed future? Nothing. And so, Jag has rejected their lives, and their values, and has tried to embrace what the fae have brought to the Iron City. And here she is now, surrounded by the fae’s poverty, and their hatred of the goblins, and what have all her efforts bought her? Nothing. These fae don’t care that she has argued to her wealthy friends that they are overlooking a cultural goldmine. They don’t care that she has sabotaged the social standing of some debutante who was rude to a fae servant. Because what has that done for any of the fae living here in these slums? Nothing. It is all nothing. She amounts to nothing.

  And now, here, the final culmination of all her attempts to help. Her plan to get Sil back in touch with her fae roots, to unlock her awareness of the potential of her mother’s heritage… it all ends in this, in Sil’s ending.

  So, she stands, and she stares. And she stares. And she stares.

  Sil does not emerge. She does not stand, shaking rubble and brick dust from her hair. She does not come to save Jag—neither from the fae nor from herself.

  As the dust starts to settle, Jag does see shapes moving—silhouettes emerging from doorways; the locals come to see what has happened to their street, and their source of income. They have come to see what has been destroyed, and who has destroyed it. And they will find her, another goblin standing in the center of it all.

  She cannot stay here. She can see, in her mind’s eye, Sil standing there and shouting at her to move.

  It hurts, turning around. She is not just abandoning the safety and security of Sil, she is walking away from her hopes for what their relationship could have become, of the ally she had hoped to cultivate. She is leaving her half-sister behind.

  She tries to keep Sil’s advice alive in her mind. Walk, she’d said. Don’t run. So, Jag walks. She keeps her head ducked, trying to hide her features. She is filthy as a kobold’s fingernails, and the dust and dirt mean she’s not obviously a goblin from a distance, but she’s not sure she can stand close scrutiny. Some fae stare at her from their shop doorways. A dryad calls out, asks if she’s alright. She keeps walking.

  Others call too. “What happened?” asks a stout gnome wearing a wife-beater and boxer shorts. “What happened?” asks a sidhe wrapped tight in a lime-green robe, her hair in curlers. Jag keeps walking. She keeps on doing what Sil told her to do.

  There’s a crowd at the end of the street. “What happened?” they ask as she tries to push past. She shrugs, mumbles. Someone grabs her shoulder. She shakes them off. Her heart is pounding. They are too close.

  But then they let her pass. Perhaps they know somehow that she has already been through enough. Perhaps they worry she carries trouble with her. Perhaps they just don’t care about her when there is a
whole disaster to care about just over her shoulder.

  So, she stumbles down the street. She walks away. Leaves Sil behind. Her sister’s body twisted and broken beneath a ton of bricks.

  Skart

  Blocks away, the last of the Dust is burning through Skart’s system. He can feel the Iron Wall closing like a vise around him, slicing off his connection to the magic and beauty of the world. The last tenuous strands of the trail leading him to the thief stretch out before him, leading down the street. And there, at the end of it, is a small hobbling figure. At the end of it is Knull.

  Skart knows exactly who Knull is. Everybody from Knife Bend to the Wallows who values their wallet knows who Knull is. A hustler, a con man, a dealer, a Dust-peddler, a waste of good oxygen, and a bloodstain waiting to happen. In many ways, Skart is surprised that the goblins haven’t swatted Knull yet. He supposes that for all his efforts, Knull has not yet flown close enough to those flames to get burned.

  Not until tonight.

  Knull, though, does not have the Dust with him. He is hobbling along, a makeshift splint strapped to one ankle—all indicators of a night of misadventure—but the large plastic-wrapped package is clearly absent. That means he has stashed it somewhere, or given it to someone, or sold it, or ingested half of it, or given it one of a thousand other fates. So Skart cannot simply flay him alive and take it back. He needs information.

  Of course, he could flay Knull alive and take the information… And that, Skart thinks, is tempting.

  Still, Skart has been tortured before. He knows getting the right information takes time. Time he doesn’t have. Even now he can see signs of the revolution leaking through the normality of the night. Too many fae are on the streets. There is too much energy buzzing among them. He can hear scuffles like thunderstorms on the horizon. There is the sound of everything slipping out of his carefully constructed control. It eats at him. It gnaws. But he needs the Dust.

  “Knull!” he calls, hurrying to catch up, trying to think clearly through the last haze of the drug.