City of Iron and Dust

by J. P. Oakes

  In the end, though, all these questions about what happened, and how, and what is still happening—they can all only orbit the one central obsession that towers at the center of his mind.

  Was it his fault?

  Could he have predicted Sil’s betrayal? Skart’s? Should he have listened to Harretta or Tharn sooner? Could he have protected his friends better? If he’d just done something different? If he’d just been a little bit smarter?

  Was it his fault?

  Except he knows the answer. It’s transparently clear. Because of course it wasn’t. How could it be? And yet, of course it was.

  He couldn’t have known.

  He should have.

  There was no way to tell.

  He wasn’t looking hard enough.

  He exists in the gap between both answers. They tear at him, fighting for what they can have of his psyche. And the idea that maybe his reason has fractured, and a hallucinatory world is slipping in through the edges, rather appeals.

  But then Tharn waves to the brixie, and makes a joke, and introduces himself, and the brixie goes pale but manages, “I’m Knull.”

  Bee recognizes the name then. A low-level dealer. A neighborhood character. But their only real point of connection is the time they shared in the office with Skart as everything went to shit.

  What does one say about that?

  Apparently neither of them knows.

  “So,” Tharn says into the silence, “how’s your night going?” He manages a smile. “Because, personally, I’ve had better.” His teeth are red with flecks of blood. Bee thinks he’s going to throw up. Knull grows paler.

  “Tough crowd.” Tharn coughs and they both watch his guts convulse.

  Perhaps there is comfort for Tharn, Bee thinks, in the certainty of his fate. Perhaps the inevitability of his own ending has answered all his questions. Now, for him, there is just waiting left.

  Quite suddenly, and with little warning, Knull starts to cry. He sobs loudly and messily, sagging against the barrier. Tears and snot stream from his face.

  “Here.” Bee stands awkwardly. “Come here.” He tries to manhandle Knull around the barrier, but then doesn’t know what to do with this brixie, only passingly familiar from a shared disaster.

  They stand in silence. Slowly, Knull regains control of himself. He sits shakily, putting his back to the barrier. Firelight plays over his face. “I’m sorry…” he says. “It’s just…” He wipes his face with the back of his hand. “It’s all so fucking pointless.” He stares into the flames for a minute. “I mean, we struggle, and we strive, and we try so fucking hard, and what does it achieve? What does it add up to? Where are we trying to get to?” His face scrunches up like a fist clenching. He seems on the edge of something. Bee feels on the edge of something too. Perhaps even the same thing as Knull. They’re both reaching, he thinks, for a way to explain this place that exists between rage and despair. They’re both trying to find a place where they can exist without being pulled apart.

  Knull slowly lowers his head between his knees. “I thought I could be something in the Iron City,” he says. “But it’s something this place won’t ever allow. I think it would rather burn to the ground than let me succeed.”

  And Bee hears another chord played in key with his own heart. “I thought I could make the Iron City into something different,” Bee says. “Somewhere that let the fae see the sun. Somewhere that isn’t just a trap or a slaughterhouse.” He looks around. He feels a lump growing in his throat. “I told fae I could win them sociopolitical equality. Such fucking hubris. As if it wasn’t just me trying to chase away the dark.”

  They sit there, and around them, a restless city stirs and moans.

  “Shit,” Tharn grunts from the floor. “I might be missing some pretty important bits of my liver, but how come I’m the only one here who’s still got his balls.”

  Bee wants to laugh. He wants to howl. How can he be about to lose this friend? This brother in the fight for liberation. He turns to Tharn, his jaw more than a little loose, tears dampening his eyes, and he doesn’t know what to say.

  “Look,” Tharn grunts. “I get it. Everything I’ve done, and none of it has changed the Iron City. None of it has liberated the fae. But ask me right now if I think it was all for nothing. I dare you, Bee. Ask me right damn now.”

  He spits. It’s pure red.

  “I may not get to see the end of this fight, Bee, but I’m still so fucking glad I fought it. And you, you’re still here, so you can’t be crushed by this. You have to let it carry you to the next fight. And the next. And the next. And when you’re the one bleeding out in some street somewhere, you have to know that your fight, your struggle…”

  He lets out a sudden moan. His gut convulses and quivers obscenely. Bee holds his hand hard.

  “…your struggle took others further,” he says through gritted teeth. “Do you hear me, Bee? Because I need… I need…” He starts to cough again.

  “I will,” Bee tries to say the words but the lump has blocked his whole throat. He’s wheezing words past it. And the more Tharn speaks, the weaker his hand feels in Bee’s own. And Bee squeezes harder and harder. He holds on tighter and tighter.

  “I need…” Tharn wheezes. “I need…” His guts shudder. “I…” He starts to convulse. Each spasm seems to wring more and more blood from him.

  “I will,” Bee manages. “I will. I will.” He tries to pour the words into Tharn like blood. Like breath. Like life.

  Finally, the shaking stops. And then after a moment more, Bee realizes that everything has stopped. Tharn has stopped. And he is sitting in the street holding his dead friend’s hand.

  Sil

  Sil is trapped in a small gray room. She is standing in dull gray light. She is trying to pick out the line where the floor becomes a wall, and where a wall becomes the ceiling. But the more she looks, the more things seem to fade away, the more the firm delineation of space seems to disappear into mist. The more she looks, the less sure she is that she could ever find the door out of here again.

  She is, she finds, quite calm about this transformation.

  Sil, can you hear me?

  The words come from a long way away. She looks around. She can’t tell where the voice is coming from.

  Sil, please.

  There is something familiar about the voice. She tries to place it but has to give up. Memories are lost in the fog. She tries focusing instead on its words. What is it asking her to do?

  She has, she finds, no idea. She looks around the room again. The walls are all gone now. Floor and ceiling are all one. She is inside a gray sphere. Everything is dissolving into… into… she’s not sure.

  Sil. Something has been done to you.

  The words break in like a radio channel swarming out of static. She blinks and for a moment she can see shapes in the mist around her. She reaches toward them tentatively, but her fingers close on nothing but smoke.

  Sil. It’s me. It’s Jag. You have to focus on my voice.

  She tries. She really does. But there is nothing to focus on. There are just sounds echoing around her.

  Sil, I don’t know what they did to you. Flicked some switch they buried in your mind or… But, whatever they did, I need you to remember who you are. I need you to fight. I need you to remember how good you are at fighting.

  Fighting… She looks down at her hands. The knuckles are bruised, the nails chipped. There are nicks and cuts all over her arms. A patina of bruises.

  She blinks and it’s gone. She thinks she does remember fighting, though. Something in that word triggers a desire to move. She gives in to it, watches herself move through forms she doesn’t remember learning.

  Yes, says the voice. Yes, that’s it.

  But she stops. She is not sure she wants to make the forms. She is not sure they make her happy.

  Come on, Sil. Focus for me. Do you remember learning that? Do you remember the time we spent with the sparring master? You would destroy me every t
ime.

  She glimpses something through the mist. A small shadow. A child perhaps. She hears another voice. Another echo.

  You must not strike the princess.

  And then a small voice, tremulous. You told me to.

  I did and you must always do as I tell you.

  But…

  The larger of the two shadows raises its hand. There is a sudden flash of pain across her cheek, sharp as a firebrand. Suddenly the mist clears, and the walls of the room are definite and clear. She sees a starched uniform hung from a hook, and—

  The mist rushes back in, soft and comforting, washing everything away, leaving her calm again.

  No, no, no! The first voice is back. Fight it, Sil. I need you to fight it.

  But she doesn’t want to fight it. She doesn’t want to fight anything anymore. She shakes her head, mulish.

  Remember tonight, the voice insists. Remember the bar. After that. Fae mercenaries tried to kill us. Our father sent them. You fought them off.

  Again, shapes move in the fog around here. Threatening. Looming. She can hear screams. She can smell blood.

  She does not like the voice. She does not think it has her best interests at heart.

  Yes, the voice says. I need you to remember that, Sil. I need you to come back to me.

  Why, Sil wonders, is she supposed to care what the voice wants?

  What about what she wants?

  Something in that thought changes things, though. Something in that thought echoes louder than the voice. The mist spasms. Images and ideas lurch out of it, into her head: a street full of flame and blood; a bottle raised to her lips, and fire in her throat; a smiling face; pain in her leg; anger; joy.

  She shakes her head. She tries to clear it of the images, go back to the peace of the fog, but the more she shakes the more the mist seems to retreat, fleeing her and her thrashing.

  Come on, Sil. Come on. It’s me. It’s Jag.

  More images now. A child. Two children. They are being introduced. She is being introduced. She is being told, This is Jag. The goblin seems small, and pathetic, and absurd to her. They tell her the goblin wants her to be her friend. She says no. She says she has friends. The goblin cries. They break her arm. When they ask her to be the goblin’s friend again, she says yes.

  They are together. She is the goblin’s shadow. She is taken away and beaten. She is returned to the goblin. The goblin laughs. She hates the goblin. She is told to love the goblin. She is beaten when she doesn’t love the goblin. She pretends she loves the goblin. She is always pretending. She forgets what it’s like to not be pretending. She’s asked if she loves the goblin and she doesn’t know if she does or not. They beat her.

  Next, they tell her to protect the goblin. Next, they send fae to kill the goblin. She kills the fae instead. They tell her she killed them because she loves the goblin. They ask her if she loves the goblin. She says yes. They beat her and call her a liar. Then they tell her she loves the goblin.

  They send her to the other, to the dead fae in live skin, to the kobold. They send her to him so she knows that a beating is a kindness. It is how they show her that they love her. The kobold shows her what hurt really is. He shows her what strength really is. He tells her it doesn’t matter if she loves Jag or not. He tells her nothing she feels matters.

  Nothing she wants matters.

  When he is done, they ask her if she loves Jag. She says that is up to them. They do not beat her.

  Sil. Sil. Sil. Sil. The voice says her name over and over. A desperate mantra weaving in and out of the images filling her head. The memories filling her. Her memories. Her memories that she does not want. That the voice is forcing upon her.

  Jag’s voice.

  She recognizes it now. She recognizes a lot of things about it now. She recognizes that Jag was kind to her, and that she was the only one to show Sil love. And yet, it was because of Jag that all these things she remembers were forced upon her.

  You can break free, Sil. You don’t have to be what they made you.

  She loves Jag. She hates Jag. It was always both.

  I need you, Sil. I need you to set us free.

  The voice only talks about what it needs. What it wants.

  She was always told she wanted nothing. But now she sees, she understands, she has always wanted everything.

  She’s just never been able to choose what to do about it before.

  She closes her eyes on the mist. On the gray. When she opens them again it is onto a small gray room, hard-edged and sharp-focused. A military uniform hangs from one peg on the wall. Jag stands in front of her.

  “Sil,” Jag says desperately.

  “I’m here,” she says.

  Jag’s eyes go wide. Her mouth opens. She flings her arms around Sil. “Thank Mab!”

  She waits until it’s over.

  Jag releases her. “OK,” she says. “OK.” She starts to pace around the small room. “We need to get out of here. We need to steal a car. I think we’ve got to get Edwyll and then get out of the Iron City entirely. My father’s lost it. I think there’s going to be a House war. I think—”

  “No,” Sil says.

  Jag stops and stares at her. “What?”

  Sil smiles.

  “No,” she says again. “I have chosen to do something else.”

  With each word, she feels lighter. She feels fuller. She feels more and more like that child refusing to be Jag’s friend.

  “What?” Jag says again.

  “You,” she says, “can do what you like, but I have chosen to take revenge.”

  Knull

  “We’ve got to carry on the fight.”

  Knull watches Bee sitting in the street holding his dead friend’s hand and mumbling to himself.

  “We’ve got to carry on the fight.”

  There is something obscene about the moment, Knull thinks. Something horribly broken.

  Bee looks up at him. “We’ve got to carry on the fight.”

  “No.” Knull shakes his head. “No, we don’t. That’s the city’s game. That’s engaging with these walls. These streets. I won’t do that anymore. I won’t be more meat for the grinder. I won’t be another dumb cow marching into its blades.”

  He is having a hard time controlling the volume of his voice, a hard time stopping the images in his head from spilling out of his mouth. He shuts his lips tightly.

  Bee sits and nods his head. He’s still kneading his dead friend’s hand. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, that’s what it wants you to think.”

  Bee wipes his mouth with the back of his free hand. “This whole city,” he says. “It wants you upside down. It wants you back to front. It’s had me fighting for freedom by helping a kobold working to oppress me. It’s had you trying to escape poverty by selling the thing that keeps us all poor. And now, when we finally see the whole monumental horror of it all—of this city, this system—it wants us to see it as being so massive that we can’t possibly imagine it failing. It wants us to think that it can’t be allowed to fail. It wants us to find it easier to imagine our own annihilation than its destruction.”

  He leans in. “It’s all a lie,” he says. “It wants us to believe it’s a city of iron, but it’s a city of dust. It’s lies and illusion, and paper-thin magic.”

  Knull closes his eyes. Let Bee have his private revelations. They’re of no use to him.

  “We have to fight,” Bee says. “We have to fight because it doesn’t want us to fight. We have to fight because it seems hopeless. We have to fight because we’re overwhelmed. We’ve got to carry on the fight.”

  Knull puts his head back. He can feel the flames from the pawnshop fire on the side of his cheek. They’re warm on a cool night.

  “I have to find Skart,” Bee says. “I have to keep up the fight. I have to stop him.”

  Knull opens his eyes. He doesn’t want to, but fate is fucking with him again.

  “What?”

  “Skart.” Bee is nodding to himself. He’s still h
olding Tharn’s cooling hand. “I don’t know what he’s doing, but I have to stop him. That’s the only thing I know anymore.”

  Knull shakes his head. It feels almost like a tremor running through his whole body.

  Edwyll’s body lying dead and bleeding on the floor. Skart standing over him…

  “You can’t,” Knull says.

  Bee nods. “That’s why I have to.”

  It doesn’t make any sense. Bee doesn’t make sense. Knull closes his eyes. He tries to feel the warmth on his cheek. He tries to make everything else go away. He tries not to see Edwyll again.

  It doesn’t work. He hears Bee standing up. He opens his eyes against his better judgment.

  “I don’t blame you for giving up,” Bee says, looking down. There is unbearable kindness in his eyes. “I see what’s happening out in the city tonight. I get it. But… giving up is not the thing that will make the world better. Whatever was done to you tonight, the only thing that will make it better is getting its blood on your knuckles.”

  Knull wants him to shut up. Knull wants him to go away. Above all, Knull wants him to be wrong. But he can still see Edwyll on the floor. He can still see himself failing him. And he can still see his parents sitting on a couch, failing to get up, failing to care, failing to engage, failing again, and again, and again. And now, he can see himself sitting right beside them, hiding in Dust-fueled dreams while Edwyll and the rest of the world rot around them.

  “I’m going to go and try to kill Skart,” Bee says. “And I’m scared. And I’d rather not do it alone.”

  Knull wants to close his eyes. He wants to pretend the flames are warm and comforting. He wants to pretend that the world isn’t on fire. He wants to pretend Edwyll is alive and well. He wants to pretend that revenge is petty. He wants to pretend he isn’t responsible for whatever Skart does with that brick of Dust.

  He wants to pretend he can thrive in the Iron City.

  But he can’t do that anymore. “Fuck you,” he says as he picks himself up.

  Bee’s gratitude is awful.