City of Iron and Dust

by J. P. Oakes

  And then there’s even a little laughter. And then there’s a pause because there are still six fae bodies lined up in the room.

  “What are we…?” someone starts, but she can’t finish.

  Bee shrugs. “My vote? Payback.”

  There’s a pause. Then: “Aye.” It’s Tharn again. All eyes go to him. He smiles at them all, a little helpless. “I’m terrified,” he said. “But screw these gobbos. If they want a fight, I’ll give it to them. So, yeah. I vote aye.”

  “Aye,” another says then. And then another. And then the rest in a rush, a whole chorus of them all around Sil. Then they look at her, and she’s not sure what to say. What they’re planning is suicide.

  “Well,” Bee says, covering the moment as best he can. “Now we know what we’re going to do, we’ll have to work out how to do it. So, I say we pour a drink for the dead, and get talking.”

  Another chorus of ayes. Not defiant, exactly, but far from defeated. Solemn, perhaps, and with rising solemnity as they step towards their fallen brethren. Bee looks back at Sil from where they stand lined up.

  “You can join us,” he says. “If you want.”

  She almost smiles at that—those words—but she catches herself in time. She doesn’t think the fae would see that smile quite the way she means it. Then the idea of their reaction strikes her as funny, and she has to fight even harder to keep her smile pushed down. She feels as if she is not quite herself, as if she is watching herself from inside her own skull.

  She doesn’t know where the fae found the bottle of whiskey, but Bee holds it and recites lines from an old poem that she doesn’t know.

  “The circle continues,” he finishes. “We return to feed new growth.” He upends the whiskey. A golden trickle baptizes the dead.

  Then he’s done, and they’re just standing there. The atmosphere edges from solemn to sullen.

  “How do you all feel,” Bee says then, “about getting the fuck out of this place and talking on the move?”

  Another chorus of ayes, and in an eager flurry of activity they head to the streets. Sil collects goblin guns as she goes, stuffing spare magazines into her pockets. A few other fae copy her.

  Out on the street, Bee puts the whiskey bottle to his lips, takes a heavy slug. Then he passes the bottle to Tharn, who drinks and passes it to the next fae. One by one they upend the bottle. And then it’s pressed into Sil’s hands.

  “You killed those goblins,” Bee says. “You’re one of us now.”

  She regards the bottle—its label of a spreading oak tree. “I…” she says. “I’ve never…” Alcohol, she knows, slows your reaction times. It impairs judgment. It gets in the way, she has been told again—and again, and again—of serving Osmondo.

  “Well,” Bee shrugs. “If you don’t want to…”

  He reaches for the bottle, but then with a desperation that takes her by surprise she jams it to her lips and pulls on it.

  And oh, oh, oh. It burns. It burns like fire. And she takes it as long as she can, which is so much longer than most, but then she pulls it away, braying, and choking, spraying the liquid fire over the rest of the fae, who are smiling and chuckling.

  “Why?” she says, her eyes streaming. “Why would you…?”

  Bee plucks the bottle from her hands, takes another swig. “Pyrrhic inclinations?”

  A sinewy dryad is shaking her head. “I can’t believe I just laughed. I didn’t think I’d…” She looks back at the apartment building.

  “They want us to laugh.” Bee presses the bottle into the dryad’s hand. “They want us to laugh, and love, and shout, and screw, and be alive. They want us to live a liberated life. All of us.”

  They keep on walking. The bottle ends up in Sil’s hands again. She regards it balefully.

  “Let me—” Bee starts, and then she takes another slug. She will not be mastered by a mere beverage. She doesn’t spit any out this time, but her eyes are still streaming when she stops.

  The bottle goes round and round again. And then several more times. When it’s empty, Sil sets it down reverentially on the curb. She feels loose and wild. Every movement feels dream-like. You are half sidhe, a voice says in her mind. And of course, she has always been that; it has always been a reason for her to know her place, but this is the first time she has ever felt it. Half of her is tearing free, coming to the fore.

  “I want to take Dust,” she tells Bee suddenly. “I’ve never taken Dust.”

  He laughs. “Taking the liberated life seriously.” He has kind eyes, she thinks. She can’t remember anyone else with kind eyes. “Well, Dust is precious, and we have precious little. I’m sorry. I think we’ve used most of it. We need—”

  “Do you have any more whiskey?” She also likes whiskey. She feels warm from head to toe.

  Bee smiles again and shakes his head. “Who are you?”

  “Told you already,” she says. “Sil.”

  He nods. “Asset Sil.”

  She flips him the finger. “Fuck asset. Fuck House Red.” She stares around, some part of her brain screaming at her that there will be consequences, that this is madness, but… there aren’t. She has escaped House Red Cap’s reach.

  “You worked for House Red?”

  She looks at him again. There was a time when she wasn’t going to tell him a word. When he was the enemy. But, no, he is House Red Cap’s enemy, and she is their asset no longer. She’s tearing free. She’s coming to the fore.

  “I did,” she tells him. She leans a little on him for support. “A bodyguard. A servant.” And then she reconsiders. “A slave,” she says.

  “But now you’re free.” Bee wraps an arm around her shoulders. “Now you fight back.”

  “Yes.” And she likes how that sounds. “Now I find Osmondo Red and I make him red.” She likes that even more. “I smear his red across the walls. I smear his whole House across the walls.”

  “Well,” Bee says, “points for enthusiasm.”

  “I hate him.” Sil is realizing that she has a name for it, the feeling she has when she sees him. “I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.” She can’t stop saying it. They made her own mind a prison and every time she says those words, she breaks free a little more, comes apart a little more, and she doesn’t know what will be left at the end, but she wants to find out.

  “Did you…” Bee is staring at her quizzically. “Did you meet him?”

  Sil nods. She licks her lips. Her tongue feels thick. “My father,” she says.

  Bee blinks, so she says it again. He stares. “He’s your…”

  “Father,” she says for a third time to make it fairy-tale true.

  “Shit.”

  “I hate him.”

  “He sent goblins to kill you.” Bee’s eyes are not so kind anymore.

  “I killed them instead.” Sil likes that as well. She pulls out her sword. She stares at it in the streetlight. “I wonder…” she says.

  Something is tearing free. Thoughts liberated, rising in her mind like dust motes caught in a beam of sunlight. She reaches for them, then hesitates, unsure.

  What does she want? At her most basic, her most fundamental? What does she want?

  “I want to kill Osmondo Red,” she tells Bee. She stops, and turns, and looks him right in the eye. And she’s knows it’s true. It’s her heart’s unspoken desire finally uttered aloud.

  “I want to kill Osmondo Red. And I know how to do it.”

  Granny Spregg

  “Mistress Brethelda! I bring urgent word! Mistress Brethelda!”

  The runner bursts into the bed chambers. The mistress of House Spriggan has just turned her back on Granny Spregg. The tears have just begun to paint Granny Spregg’s cheeks.

  “Mistress Brethelda! I—”

  The runner takes in the scene.

  “Speak,” Brethelda says, her voice as empty of emotion as Thacker’s body lying dead on the floor.

  “I…” the runner tries. “I… I am sent… I have urgent…” His eyes fli
ck to the body, back to Brethelda. He tries again. “Osmondo Red is at our gates. He demands to see the…” His eyes go to Granny Spregg this time. “He demands to see the Dust that Madame Spregg spoke of.”

  A moment as still as Thacker’s chest.

  Then Brethelda turns. “Oh,” she says, and her mouth is full of teeth and rage. “Oh, Mother…”

  Their eyes meet. And she could stop now, Granny Spregg knows. She could stop struggling against the pain. She could give into the clawing hands of age, and history. She could rest. She could let the world move on without her hand scrabbling for its turn on the tiller.

  Except, Granny Spregg knows, she is as incapable of doing that as she is of breathing fresh life into Thacker.

  “All the Dust in the house,” she says to Brethelda, sitting up straight in the bed. “Every ounce we have. Get it. Gather it. Compile it.”

  Brethelda opens an indignant mouth, but Granny Spregg doesn’t have time. She rounds on the runner. “Go to the kitchens. Get thirty-eight pounds of powdered sugar. If we do not have that much, supplement with flour. Put it in a clear plastic bag. Use the Dust Mistress Brethelda gives you to make a layer on the top. As thick as you can. Then bind it airtight with packing tape. Be careful, but do not be neat. Dirty it. If there is pig or beef blood nearby splash that on it. Then bring it to me in the Room of Hours. All of it.”

  Brethelda is staring at her. “You—” she starts.

  “Meanwhile,” Granny Spregg says, “I will stall Osmondo for as long as I am able.”

  Brethelda is grinding her teeth. She is getting ready to dig in her heels. Granny Spregg meets her eye.

  “I will save your House.”

  Your. The word tastes bitter. It tastes like Thacker’s death. But Osmondo is poised to sweep them all over the edge and Granny Spregg has to give a little here. It is all too close, and all too precarious.

  “Fine,” Brethelda snaps.

  And like that, the runner is gone, and Brethelda too with a shake of her head, and Granny Spregg is hauling herself from her bed. She heaves on a pair of tapered pants and an old military jacket, the relic of a lover whose wardrobe has outlived any other fond memories she has of him. It is not much, but it is good enough for Osmondo.

  She hobbles down House Spriggan’s hallways, travelling as fast as she can. Osmondo is not a patient man. The pain in her arm has reached above her elbow now.

  It takes her old bones almost ten minutes to make it through the sprawling corridors of the House to the Room of Hours—as deep into the House as any outsider will ever be permitted. The journey is startlingly quiet without Thacker’s constant harrying. She tells herself she enjoys it. She thinks she is going to have to be considerably more convincing when she talks to Osmondo.

  Before the doors to the room, she pauses, straightens her jacket. Thacker does not tell her that her hair is well coiffed. She takes a breath. She feels faint and brittle. Brethelda has surely been using the pretense of security procedures to delay Osmondo’s entry into the room. He is likely almost rabid with irritation.

  It would be delightful if everything wasn’t so dire.

  She opens the door. She steps inside.

  Osmondo Red is just entering the room from a door opposite hers. His back is to her and he’s screaming back at whatever hapless guard Brethelda sent to delay him.

  “Utter bullshit!” he’s shouting. “I’ll raze this place to the—”

  “Osmondo,” Granny Spregg says, desperately trying to hold her voice steady. “I had thought my feminine charms faded, but it seems you cannot stay away from me.”

  He spins on his heel, glares. “You,” he hisses.

  “Yes.” She inclines her head. “I told you, in all of this, I am the one who speaks for House Spriggan. This is my design, Osmondo. You are here at your appointed hour.”

  Which, of course, he damn well isn’t, but she will keep this fiction of control spinning for as long as she can. There is still a chance to make it all come true. And there is still a chance that if it all goes to shit, then she can ensure that it will all go to shit for Brethelda along with her.

  “I think,” Osmondo says, “that if I stabbed you now, bullshit would actually flow from your veins.”

  Which given the workings of the poison in her system, isn’t too far from the truth.

  “You doubt me,” Granny Spregg acknowledges. “You are a goblin of little faith.”

  “I have about as much faith in you as I have in a wet fart’s ability to knock over one of Ethrek’s tower blocks.” Osmondo starts to stalk toward her. “You have been stuffed full of lies as long as I have known you, Bedlack, and now I think you have forgotten where they end and the truth begins. I think you are an addled old fool who has come up with a scheme she thinks will give her back her House. I think you forget how you fell from grace in the first place.”

  He is inches from her now, lips pulled back from his teeth.

  “This is not the first time you have overextended, Bedlack,” he says. “This is not the first time you left your House exposed. Last time, Brethelda saved this House. And no matter what you tell yourself in the dark, it was not because she was ambitious, or because she had always wanted to depose you, or because you are an ugly whore of a mother who has always treated her own children like shit. She took over because you were no longer fit to lead. And that is still true.

  “But she cannot save you this time. All your feeble machinations and designs have achieved is to expose Brethelda as another incompetent. All they mean is that when I scour you from the face of the city, I will do it with impunity.”

  Osmondo is so close his lips almost brush hers. “All I came here to do,” he whispers, “was to thank you for the opportunity.”

  Granny Spregg’s heart is trembling in her chest. And in so much, of course, Osmondo is right.

  It was an uprising fifteen years ago. For the first time in a long time, the Houses’ grip on the city had felt precarious. The fighting in the streets had gone on for days, bodies piling up against store windows and in the Houses’ courtyards. But finally, the tide was turning in the goblins’ favor. And in the bloody chaos of it all, Granny Spregg had seen an opportunity. She had organized a counterstrike not against the fae, but against the other Houses. Commando squads running counter-ops, taking out tactically placed teams from Houses Red, Hobgob, Bogle, and Troll; creating opportunities for the fae to pummel House Spriggan’s opponents.

  And it had worked like a dream, just as she had foreseen. It was her masterstroke.

  And then it was not.

  She had underestimated the fae. She had overestimated her commandos. She had lost too many in the fights with the other Houses. Suddenly she too was struggling to hold the city secure.

  And then one morning she had gone to the operations center, and all her generals had been there, and Brethelda too, and Osmondo Red, and Guntra Trog, and Ethrek Hobgob, and strange, squirming Jeremark Bogle. All her enemies, all lined up, all in her seat of power. Even Privett and Nattle had been there—her two idiot children dressed for war. And Brethelda had explained in quiet, simple words that Granny Spregg’s time was done. Her war was done. Brethelda had brokered new peace, new trust, so the fae threat could be met with a united front. And Granny Spregg had raged, and spat, and clawed, and armed guards had dragged her back to her chambers, as she frothed all the way.

  She has been clawing her way out of them for fifteen years. Fingerhold by fingerhold she has crawled back toward power. And she has lost so much along the way. In the end, she had only Thacker left. Now, even he has been taken from her.

  Osmondo turns his back on her, starts to move towards the door. She gathers her breath.

  “The only insulting thing that you have managed to suggest,” she tells him, “is that I don’t learn from my mistakes.”

  He turns, looks back. And she couldn’t have timed it better if she wanted to. The door behind her swings open and a servant staggers in, struggling under the weight of a package w
rapped in clear plastic.

  The servant slaps the brick down on the table between them, bows, departs. Osmondo stares. Granny Spregg can tell he wants to look away, to read her expression, but he can’t. His jaw works slowly.

  “We’ve known each other a long time, Osmondo,” Granny Spregg says. “So, for old times’ sake, I’ll let you try a little if you like.” She reaches into a pocket, pulls out a penknife, proffers it to him. She tries to keep her hand very steady.

  Finally, he looks away from the massive, plastic-wrapped bundle. He looks at her. He looks at the knife. And she is acutely aware of exactly how much harm he could do with it.

  She prays he is as overwhelmed as she needs him to be. She prays that he is so much on the back foot that he cannot take even a half-step forward.

  Each of the Houses has a small amount of Dust. It is a good tool for war if your soldiers are suicidal enough. If they don’t mind injuring themselves almost as much as they injure their opponents. But times have been peaceful for so long that the Houses mostly use their supplies for recreational purposes.

  Dust can get a goblin high if she’s feeling masochistic enough. They aren’t creatures built for magic, though, and the power of it can tear flesh, can warp muscle and wither organs. There is some stockpiled too for emergencies, for the bodyguards of a House’s head to use in a last desperate attempt to fend off attackers. But goblins can build nothing lasting with magic, and so none of them hold much. Certainly, none of them hold anything close to this vast bulk of Dust. Most of the city’s supply is in the hands of dealers, but none of them have held this much before. Not until Cotter smuggled this in.

  “No,” Osmondo says finally. “No. I won’t take whatever bullshit poison you are trying to get in my veins, Bedlack. You do it. You show me this is real and not more of your bullshit dramatics.”

  She tries to not scream in victory. Because only she knows how solid the straws he thinks he’s grasping at really are. And only she knows that he’s just handed her the opportunity to yank them away from his grasping fingers.

  She slices open the sack, skims just a thin layer from the top of it with the blunt little blade. She raises it to her nostrils, and inhales.