City of Iron and Dust

by J. P. Oakes

  She sees Skart reach the doorway. She sees him framed there. She hears silence fall abruptly. When she arrives beside him, she immediately glimpses the way one fae’s weight moves—a brixie, the oldest of the three, a dirty street rat of a fae. He is about to fling himself forward despite the makeshift splint bound to his ankle. She brings her sword to rest upon his Adam’s apple before he even has a chance to realize what he’s decided to do.

  “Hello, Knull,” Skart says. He is smiling. He is happy.

  There are two others in the room. Another brixie, younger, paler, more delicately boned and—

  “How—” Knull’s throat bounces against the sword blade.

  Sil should be reading his body language now. She should be assessing the tone of his voice and the diameter of his pupils. But the third occupant of the room is Jag.

  Slow ripples work their way across Sil’s psyche. Jag. It is Jag. She was looking for Jag. She has to keep Jag safe. But… she has to keep Skart safe. She has to keep Jag safe. She has to keep Skart safe. She looks from one to the other, sees the resentment between them, the burgeoning antagonism.

  Jag hasn’t seen her yet, is focused on Skart. She moves slightly. She doesn’t have to. It is not… required, but it is not forbidden either and so she does. Jag’s eyes flick to her and go wide.

  “Sil!”

  The younger brixie looks at her too and blanches. “Oh shit. No. Not you.”

  Sil dismisses him. He offers no threat now.

  “Ah,” Skart says with his wide smile and his dead eyes. “Reunions. But, alas, I have no time for them.” The smile drops away. “Give me the Dust,” he tells Knull.

  “Fuck you.” Knull spits. Her blade nicks his skin as his throat works. And Skart doesn’t even flinch as the phlegm hits him. There is so much worse, Sil knows, that has been done to him.

  “Don’t do this,” Jag says, and it takes Sil a moment to realize from Jag’s tone and intonation that she is talking to her. “Let us go.”

  Sil looks to Skart for confirmation. He doesn’t look at her. She keeps her sword where it is, barring the way.

  “Sil, ignore this kobold asshole and let us go!” Jag is half shouting.

  She watches her own arm tremor. She should, she thinks, obey. This is Jag. She does what Jag says. But she must do what Skart says. But she always obeys Jag. She must look to Skart.

  She looks at Skart. This time he glances at her. Infinitesimally, he shakes his head. Her arm grows steady once more.

  “Sil!” Jag is pleading with her.

  This time, she tries to not look at Skart. This time, she tries to keep her eyes only on Jag. She tries to move her arm. Somehow, she moves her head. She looks at Skart.

  “No,” Skart says in his calm dead voice. “I don’t want to let them go. I want them—” He turns back to Knull. “—to give me—” His voice rises. “—the fucking Dust.”

  “Sil…”

  Desperation, she thinks. That is the name of the emotion she hears in Jag’s voice.

  This time, though, she doesn’t need to look at Skart. This time, despite all the warring voices in her head, she knows to shake her head herself.

  “Give him,” she hears herself say in a flat monotone, “the fucking Dust.”

  Knull

  Knull won’t do it. He won’t give this asshole the fucking Dust. Finally, this deep in, he is discovering his own rebellion. He is embracing his own desire to disobey. Now, he wants to brandish his middle fingers in Skart’s face. There’s just the issue of the sword blade at his throat.

  He opts for a more verbal attempt at defiance. “Why don’t you go sit on that sword?” he says to the white-haired half-fae, the one the goblin called Sil.

  He doesn’t even get anger from her, though. She doesn’t twitch.

  “What did you do to her?” the goblin, Jag, demands from over Knull’s shoulder, but quite frankly, Knull couldn’t give two shits what she cares about right now.

  Skart also seems disinterested. “Give me the Dust, you selfish child,” he says to Knull, “so I can save the Iron City.”

  Knull laughs at that. There is something wrong with his laugh. It has gone as septic as the rest of the world. “Save the Iron City?” he says. “You? You’re the thing it needs to be saved from. You’re the thing it is. You’re toxic. You’re poison. You’re murder. You’re betrayal. You’re… You’re…” Words fail him. The image in his mind is of something malignant, something with a myriad grasping arms, groping, ensnaring.

  “Give me the Dust,” Skart says in the same calm tone, “or l will have Sil execute every living being in this house.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Jag says. “I am the heir to House Red, and my father—”

  “Your father will be able to do nothing to me,” Skart says. “Because I will have died in his service.” A flicker of something—perhaps a smile, perhaps a grimace. “You have no ability to threaten me with his name. So be quiet before I have Sil drive that blade through your pretty throat.”

  “She’ll do it,” Edwyll says. The hatred in his voice is warring with the fear. “I’ve seen… She…” Edwyll looks like he’s about to throw up.

  “No.” Jag’s voice is as full of conviction as Edwyll’s. “No, she won’t.” She looks Sil right in the eye. “Sil, you have to protect them.”

  Sil’s arm is shaking again. Knull wishes she wouldn’t do that. He can feel the sting of her blade as it nicks the tender flesh of his throat.

  A look of irritation flashes across Skart’s impassive face, the moment of animation almost startling. “Your sister is distracting you,” he says to Sil. She doesn’t respond. Her arm is still shaking. Skart reaches into his pocket and pulls out a switchblade. He takes his time opening it.

  “Fine,” Skart says. He turns to Sil. “I don’t need you to see this through. Take Princess Jaggered back to House Red Cap.” He looks at Knull. “I’ll carve the answers I need out of this trash.”

  And that’s it. All the preamble of the night is finally over. Perhaps, Knull thinks, this was always inevitable, ever since he and Skart first met in the street earlier that night.

  Now, the end finally begins. And, in the alleyway, Knull saw Skart take on the goblin commandos. He finally understands what Skart is capable of. He knows how slim his chances are. But he sets his feet, and he readies himself for this fight.

  Edwyll

  Edwyll doesn’t want to die. This hardly separates him from many fae, but it is still the spark that has driven so much of his life. It was Lila who helped him see it. That memory is tainted now, but it doesn’t make her words less true: Painting is way of staying alive, a way of lasting beyond death, of having an impact even when we’re no longer here.

  Edwyll, in a city where the threat of death is ever-present for fae, has always fought against it. But now, as death bares its teeth at him, he doesn’t know how to fight it.

  He sees Knull make his move. Sil shifts her weight toward Jag, and Knull goes the other way, trying to get past her toward the kobold. But Sil seems to have anticipated this, and as she moves her sword whips back and forth, and the hilt hits Knull in the side of the head, driving his skull into the doorframe, and he just stands there dazed and blinking while the kobold smirks into his face.

  Sil comes toward Edwyll. Death comes toward him. And he has still not done anything. He has still not changed anything. Whatever great work of art he has dreamed of creating is still unborn within him. Whatever type of immortality he dreamed of is out of reach. Because Edwyll is certain now that he will die. He has seen what the Iron City does to hope. He has seen what his brother has always known: that any softness it offers is just a thin veneer of wool pulled over fur, and claws, and teeth.

  But Jag, he thinks, still offers hope. Because Jag isn’t an artist. She isn’t one voice. She is a chance for so many voices to ring out louder than they ever have in the Iron City. She is a patron, not just for him, but for all fae artists who dream of change. If only she has a chance. If only
the city doesn’t claim her now.

  So he steps forward, into death, into Sil’s path, to try and buy her that chance, that moment to escape.

  He steps forward, and he is screaming something, some denial. He is getting in the way. He is preventing this last assault on all that he believed her life could one day be.

  At first, he thinks that Sil has punched him. He feels the blow and staggers back. But he tries to collapse, and the pain is so blinding that he cries out. And then he looks down and the sword is inside him. He can see the silver of its blade ending abruptly where his shirt begins. He can feel its edge slicing deeper as he reels, tearing more of him apart.

  He looks up. Sil’s face is a grimace of horror. There is a tearing sensation in Edwyll’s guts. Sil has stepped back. Edwyll can see all of her sword once more. Its white blade has turned to red.

  Edwyll sits down very suddenly and very hard. He feels so overwhelmed by all this. There seems to be a lot of noise coming from all around him. Fae are shouting. Fae, he thinks, are screaming. He can’t deal with that right now. It doesn’t seem important anymore. Nothing seems very important anymore. He is very tired.

  Slowly, Edwyll lies back, and closes his eyes.

  Knull

  Time stops. Hearts stop. Blood stops in veins. Arteries clog, clutching at their precious cargo. Outside, surely, fae stand static in the streets, their mouths open, their thoughts frozen. Vehicles must be motionless, the dirt kicked up by their tires hanging crystalline in the air.

  Everything stops. Everything must stop. There can be no more progress from here. This must serve as the final period at the end of the history of the Iron City. Knull cannot permit it to continue any longer. He cannot. Edwyll is lying bleeding on the floor and if another second ticks past then he knows it will be his last. So, if time does not do this for Knull, if it maintains its relentless march toward the future, then Edwyll will be no more than an imprint in its footprint. He will never be here again to chastise Knull for leaving. He will never again ask Knull to abandon his dreams. And Knull will never again choose them over his brother. He will never let Edwyll down one more time. And all that will be left then will be the knowledge that he never turned it around. He never redeemed himself in Edwyll’s eyes. Knull will always have failed his brother. Forever.

  So, the Iron City must stop.

  But it doesn’t. The second hand ticks on. Traffic glides forward. Guns still fire. And hearts still beat, so blood still flows, and wounds still gush all over a bedroom’s filthy floor.

  The goblin loses it. She is screaming, howling, raging. She flings herself at Sil. The half-fae is staring at the body on the floor, and moves to block the goblin so slowly that several of her punches land before Sil finally turns and drives the butt of her sword hilt into the goblin’s temple, and sends her to her knees.

  The goblin stares dazedly at Sil. Knull stares at Edwyll on the floor.

  “Get her out of here,” Skart says from some other planet.

  Sil picks up the half-conscious goblin and throws her over her shoulder. The goblin starts to kick and Sil rests her sword long enough to punch her captive hard in the kidneys. The goblin goes limp and Sil carries her away.

  Knull just stares at Edwyll on the floor.

  “Give me the Dust, Knull,” Skart says. “It would be a shame if more fae had to die.”

  Knull tries to breathe. The world has not stopped. He is still living. He needs to perform the activities of the living. He needs to breathe.

  “The Dust, Knull,” Skart says from the cold empty world where he lives. “I am out of patience.”

  The Dust. Skart still cares about the Dust. It is such an absurd thing to want now, it seems. It is so preposterous that Skart still has ambitions, and goals, and schemes. That he still thinks it is important to rail against the world.

  Not even Dust can bring back the dead. And there are only moments, Knull is sure, before Edwyll is dead. He could use the Dust himself, try to seal his wounds, twist the flesh together as if it were putty. But that wouldn’t stop the skewered organs from gushing blood into the seal cavity. Wouldn’t actually save a life, just make the end more painful. Knull is not a healer.

  He wants the world to stop.

  Although, Knull thinks, perhaps if there is one way to make sure the world stops, it is to give the Dust to Skart. Nothing, surely, can be more toxic to existence than that? Nothing can lead to a more rapid end.

  Everything will stop hurting if he just gives Skart the Dust.

  Won’t it?

  So, he gives in. He points. And Skart’s laugh is disbelieving. “Under the bed?” he says, and Knull thinks perhaps he does see a little bit of it now—this truth that has just been revealed to him in all its horror and glory: how stupid, and pointless, and mad existence is.

  “Everything almost fell apart,” Skart says, “because you hid the Dust under your fucking bed?” He shakes his head. “Get it for me.”

  Knull does it numbly, rooting around, heaving out the plastic-wrapped mass of it, shoving it at Skart.

  Skart holds it like it’s his child. Like a long-lost lover with whom he is finally reunited.

  Knull barely pays attention. He doesn’t care what Skart does or what he thinks. He is staring at Edwyll. At his brother. In his last moments, Edwyll is slowly opening and closing his eyes. He is looking back at Knull. If Knull stays here, he will be the last thing Edwyll sees.

  Abruptly, Knull thinks he is going to throw up. Suddenly he is being crushed. The whole weight of the not-gone-away world is pressing down on him, and it is too much. It is all too much. He cannot breathe.

  He stands up. He’s not sure how. He can’t feel his legs. He crashes against the doorframe on his way out. Maybe Skart looks up from what he’s doing. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he has the Dust. Perhaps not. Knull doesn’t know. Knull doesn’t care. It’s all gone away. It’s all stopped. It is all dead. Everything inside of him. Ambition. Hope. Dreams. Everything he thought he could be. It is all lying dead on the floor. It is all sprayed across the walls of a factory basement. It’s all burning in the streets.

  Everything falls down, but somehow Knull still stands, tottering his way down the hallway that leads away from what was never a home, and out into the empty annihilation of the burning night.

  18

  The View from Rock Bottom

  Granny Spregg

  “Where,” Granny Spregg spits, “in the ever-living fuck is my Dust?”

  The young Spriggan commando whose lapels she has just grabbed looks at her with something that hovers between shock and revulsion. He splutters, clearly unsure if he should be reaching for his weapon or not.

  In all fairness to the young soldier, she has not really announced herself as much as she has lurched out of the Iron City’s streets to assault him with requests for knowledge he doesn’t have the clearance to possess. It would, she can see, be unsettling for anyone.

  Granny Spregg, though, did not claw and gnaw her way to the top to be fair.

  She slaps the young soldier as hard as her aching wrist will allow. “My Dust,” she says, “you ass.”

  That seems to help him make his mind up about the gun. He unclips a pistol from his belt, points it at her with both hands. “Back off, you crazy old bitch.”

  Etiquette, Granny Spregg reflects, has never been House Spriggan’s forte.

  The soldier’s compatriots are taking notice now. Some laugh. “Got yourself an admirer?” one asks. “You finally found the oldest whore in the Iron City?” calls another great wit.

  “Need help taking down an old lady do you, rookie?” asks another. Several of his friends seem eager to assist.

  Granny Spregg is bruised, battered, bereft, possibly mid-heart-attack, but she is not going to take shit like this.

  She totters forward, putting up a protective hand while the soldier tries to defend himself, more from the taunts than from her. Which means he is not ready to fend her off when she grabs his gun barrel, and twists, an
d wrenches. He yelps, and then his gun is pressed hard against his mouth.

  Around Granny Spregg a lot of curse words are suddenly yelled, and a lot of guns are suddenly brought to bear…

  “The lesson,” Granny Spregg tells the terrified young soldier, “shall begin with manners.” Blood spills from her splitting lips as she talks.

  “Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh fuck.”

  And then another voice. “What in the…?”

  It is the voice she’s been waiting for, the baritone that will carry across parade grounds. She turns and provides a bloodstained smile. “General Callart,” she says.

  “Madame Spregg,” Callart says, and he’s a good enough soldier to only sound mildly surprised. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  There is a moment, and then a lot of guns are put away very quickly indeed, and the young soldier about to fellate a gun barrel moans softly.

  “Has he caused offense?” Callart asks with mild curiosity.

  “He called me a bitch.”

  Callart closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he looks tired. “Do you want to pull the trigger,” he asks, “or shall I?”

  After Granny Spregg has pistol-whipped the soldier to the extent she is able—although not at all to her satisfaction—she points her now throbbing hand at Callart. “Now,” she says, “it’s your turn. Tell me where my Dust is.”

  Callart cocks his head. “Dust, Madame Spregg?”

  She sighs. “I do not have time for you to play the coy politician, Callart,” she says. “But as I am too tired to beat sense into you, I am going to try to explain things.

  “You know you are here at my design. You also know that I don’t give a pig’s wet fart what the fae think about their station in life. What I care about is why the fae felt that the bulge in their britches was big enough that they could rise up again. What I care about is why you keep running into House Red Cap patrols already in the Fae Districts.”

  Callart’s face is carefully blank for a moment and then calculatedly shrewd.