by Lee Bond
“Freaked the fuck out and went around murdering and whatnot.” Garth supplied helpfully. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
“Just so, Master Nickels, just so.” Agnethea wanted to hang her head in shame, but didn’t. She knew what she’d done, and accepted that fact. As the first of the Golems, as the very first, she’d done more evil, engaged in more appalling acts than any other of her kind, and for so very much longer; the next Golem to appear hadn’t been for more than three thousand years. Believing herself doomed to an eternity of loneliness, she’d wrought dreadful revenge on those she considered beneath her.
Had done so, in fact, until very recently.
Agnethea repeated the words sadly. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
“That’s something I know quite a bit about, Mistress Agnethea.” Garth commiserated, though only just. It was plain to see from both sides of the table that they’d both done some pretty reprehensible things. Fortunately –or unfortunately, depending on who you asked- they were intelligent enough to know that regardless of the path that’d taken them to those moments, they were still responsible. They could’ve stopped.
They just hadn’t chosen to.
***
Garth hunted his next target down, wishing there were any other way to avoid doing this, wishing he’d never needed to come to Arcade City, knowing deep in his quadronium-laced bones that there’d been no other choice; his initial plans had centered around various forms of ‘lobbing gigantic bombs at the hard to miss Dome until it blows right the fuck up and I can reinvent Slurpees because I would like something nice in my life for a change’, but after wasting years in in pointless research into The Dome, the only thing he’d learned –and right away- was that he wasn’t the only brilliant bulb in the bunch.
Pretty much from the moment Arcade City’s inscrutable Dome had popped into being above an entire goddamn island, people had been … interested. In blowing it up. In harvesting the materials. In finding out what was really going on inside, usually with the aid of bombs or lasers or missile or esoteric alien weapons that shot, like, radioactive piranha-bees.
Hell, even Trinity Itself had tried on and off for longer than Garth would’ve believed possible. According to the files recovered from AI storage systems in Ha’Penny House, their illustrious machine mind leader had -for more than ten thousand years- tried so many different methods of bringing Blake’s nanotech Dome down that Garth was earnestly surprised there was a planet left; contrary to what most people on Earth believed, it was more likely that Trinity was directly responsible for much of the planet’s terrible condition instead of the people living there.
Nothing had worked. Nothing of Trinityspace or beyond The Cordon would have ever worked. In a very real sense, The Dome was precisely the same as a Cordon-node.
If only he’d known from the beginning! If only he’d considered the myth of The Dome’s arrival on Earth as fact. If only he’d thought ‘hey, there’s, like, only one way for that to happen, and it rhymes with shmanosmarmiculate’.
Garth bit back a curse as his next target, one Henrietta, headed down a side road not ringed by helpful rooftops.
Because of course she’d change her fucking habits, right? Anyone in a not-so-secret ‘we hate everyone and can kill you all’ murderclub would have to be colossally and monumentally moronic to miss the fact that one of the theoretically unkillable Golems had just had his brains splashed all over everywhere.
News like that traveled at the speed of light. Luckily, Garth had been prepared for everyone to change it up, which was why he’d picked that fuck-knuckle in the first place; Bertram was –had been- one of the older Golems on Luther’s side, and a seriously tough character because of it.
Stowing the sniper rifle across his back, Garth leaped gently to the ground the absolute second he was certain Henrietta wasn’t going to show up and start whanging away with her mostly unbreakable flesh.
Urban snipe hunting sucked, even more so on the ground. Too much chaos, too many open doors, too many bored as fuck people lounging around more than willing to shout ‘hey, bro, what the fuck you shootin’ at people for’ for shits and giggles, and then of course there were the Samaritans. While it was nearly impossible to imagine even the craziest, batshit insane gearhead involving him or herself in Golem business, there were people out there who hoped to curry favor with the ruling elite.
“Annnny fucking time now.” Garth rapped a gauntleted fist against his ebony eye.
Owing to the miasma bleeding all over the place, DarkEye had zero ability to track Henrietta; much like it’d spat and flared when looking at Barnabas the few times it’d been operational, the particulate hated Golems.
But there was more than one way to track the untrackable…
If you didn’t see the drop of rain hitting the still lake, you could still track where the droplet…
There.
If the flow of Ickfordians flocking away from a place identified by DarkEye as Honest Horace’s House of Hosiery was any indication, Henrietta the Golem had picked her spot.
Garth trudged onward, considering his options for dispatching the cruel and sick woman calling herself Henrietta.
There were only a few.
And they all fucking sucked.
***
They’d moved from a dining room that would’ve easily been at home in Batman’s gothic mansion –Burton, not Nolan- and were now sitting awkwardly in a small but cozy den for after dinner drinks; well, he was sitting awkwardly because if there was one thing he hadn’t planned on doing a lot of when designing the armor was, well, sitting around chatting casually on soft couches in the presence of a woman who was at least partially evil.
Nor would he have expected to be enjoying himself.
Cradling a brandied coffee on one armored knee, himself daintily sitting on the edge of a cushioned chair –he refused to remove either the sniper rifle or the shotgun from the mounting brackets on his shoulder- Garth surveyed the room while Agnethea whispered quietly to another servant.
The room itself was covered in paintings, the focus of the artwork ranging widely from portraiture of Agnethea from different periods in time –Garth was particularly fond of the portrait in which his darkly beautiful hostess looked an awful lot like that chick from Legend, all done up as a Gothic princess complete with midnight black lipstick- to photorealistic sketches of the monsters you fell afoul of in the wilds of Arcade City.
DarkEye drank all the data in, dating the paintings, assembling profiles of the beasts in the paintings, correlating what he was seeing with what he’d assumed them to be this whole time and painting –here, Garth chuckled at himself- a fine picture of what life was like in Arcade City.
Monsters. The actual stuff of myth and legend from the ancient mists of Old Earth, given birth ‘neath the Clockwork Dome of Gears, dredged up out of the dust by King’s Will alone.
“You have quite a distant look in your eyes. Eye.” Agnethea flushed. “Where are you inside that head of yours, Master Nickels?” To hide her embarrassment, the Queen of Ickford sipped at her coffee, the delicious brandy warming her stomach.
Garth waved a hand at the paintings and pictures on the walls. “Did you do the drawings of these were… of these Shaggy Men and Bolt-Necks and all?”
Agnethea nodded pleasantly. “I did.”
“The oldest one of these,” Garth drew on info from DarkEye, “is about four thousand years old. How in the hell do you manage to keep all these ancient things safe in a place like Arcade City? This whole fucking place is an insane asylum run by a madman with the powers of a God.”
Agnethea switched a finger back and forth. “Tsk tsk tsk, Master Nickels. Talk like that outside these walls will find you in dire trouble. Even the most crudey-crude afflicted gearhead that stinks of burning hot metal and has steam coming out her ears will still find cause to beat you to a pulp for making mock of the King.”
Inwardly, though, the Golem was trying to figure out how Nick
els kept coming up with such precise dates for the things she possessed. It was maddening. Aloud, “In response to your question, though, underground.”
Garth nodded, saying, “Ah.”
“You say that like you understand everything.” Agnethea chided.
“I do. As one of the most hated … species … under The Dome, your kind probably found it easier to live underground than above.” The cool, calm, analytical side of a fully trained SpecSer who’d seen combat across a thousand worlds and in such varied manner rose up.
That side of him was a double-edged sword. Learning how to stand outside the world and look inside, to gauge a thing –any thing- for all it was worth, all it could be, all it would ever be, reducing everything to a one or a zero … that training was at least partially responsible for the thing he’d become.
“From what I’ve seen in this room and the dining room and your private offices upstairs, Arcade City has been through both tumultuous and prosperous times. You yourself said that King Blake has experimented with different ideas. Logically, since no one inside The Dome could’ve ever been exposed to the concept of this kind of city, you lived in one yourself at one time, and cities like this mean underground passageways. Sewer lines, storage facilities, that sort of thing. I won’t claim to know where they all are, or how to get in, but lady, you’re not dealing with one of the chumps outside. I’ve been around. I’ve done things. I’ve seen …”
Garth shook his head. “I’ve seen things you can’t imagine.”
Agnethea wanted to snap back with her own comments; a hot surge of noble anger rose in her, because no matter what other people thought –even her own King, for the love of God- she wasn’t an abomination, she was something unique in all the world. Those ‘chumps’ outside her walls, they knew how to treat the Queen of Ickford.
“There it is.” Garth whispered, pointing right at her, blue eye gleaming in the soft light. He knew that look well, oh yes, he did. He’d given it to a lot of enemies down the years. “There it is. You haven’t been long off the dark side, have you, fair Queen of Ickford?”
Ashamed of the momentary rush of overweening pride that’d coursed through her veins, face coloring brightly, Agnethea busied herself with finishing her brandied coffee. When she felt she could trust herself to speak without stammering –or without shouting at him-, Agnethea spoke. “No. No I have not been. This is … all new.”
Garth flashed his hostess a quick smile. This was a damn weird evening, with all the pushing and pulling they were doing with one another. Was this what you did when two people were mutually attracted to each other when sex was definitely off the table? Taunt? Tease? Push each other’s’ buttons until ardor was translated into anger?
“You’ll get there.” He said supportively.
“I rather doubt that I will, in truth, Master Nickels.” Agnethea returned Garth’s smile with one of her own.
“Why is that?” Garth tilted his head to one side. Stuffed full of delicious meat as he was, Garth could honestly say that –all things considered- this was the most relaxed he’d been since … since … ever. Even Specter was quiet for the moment. Instant regret at how he’d just treated Agnethea washed over him.
“Because this is all play-acting. I pretend at civility. Better than most.” Agnethea blurted the words out. There. She’d said it. Aloud. To someone in the position to make mock and walk away without injury; no matter what she thought of herself, no matter how powerful she knew she was, the things she could do, here, in her own Castle of Gears, Garth Nickels was easily her match, and for more than one reason: aye, like as not she could handle the man in his armor, but once that was destroyed … well, there was still man himself, wasn’t there?
“Because as an Obsidian Golem, the Dark Iron has sealed in all the hatred and rage. It does not weaken, it will not purify, and it will not dissipate. Unlike gearheads, who fall under King’s Will, I and my kind are separate. We cannot learn from our past mistakes, we cannot grow wise, we cannot truly become calm. And that …”
“And that is why you want these people of yours killed.” Garth nodded.
“Just so, Master Nickels.” Agnethea pressed her lips firmly together for a moment, absurdly delighted to be able to speak with someone who understood. “As the Eldest, I am most able to appear … normal. In the last hundred or so years, and through first building then overseeing Ickford’s existence, I’ve been able to curtail the darker leanings in my soul through the diligent application of pride. I’m proud of what I’ve wrought here, Master Nickels, even though the King himself would see it torn down around my ears.”
Agnethea stopped talking for a moment, but a blind man could see that the sad-sounding Queen of Ickford had more to say, so Garth contented himself with looking around the room more; for all her claims that she only played at civility, at being a normal person, the ex-Specter was more than willing to go on record as saying Agnethea had an artist’s eye for detail and –more importantly- an artist’s patience.
A permanently enraged monster always hungry for chaos couldn’t create a damn thing. Certainly not something as darkly wonderful as Ickford.
The self-styled Queen smiled at Garth’s charitable chivalry, huffed out a small, woeful sigh, and continued onwards. “The King needn’t tax himself in the destruction of Ickford. My kind have flocked here, Master Nickels, fled the other circles and rings, departed their underground caverns, hied themselves hither from the snowy northern wastelands and the over-hot dune sands to the south. They have come, and brought with them their … their nature. They are going to do for Ickford far more thoroughly than King Barnabas Blake ever could.”
“Not all of them are bad, though, given a skewed value of bad?” Thinking of the sorts of Golems that could make a woman like Agnethea despair for her creation brought Young Luther, with his dead eyes and chalk white skin, to mind.
“No. Not all. Some few understand what it is I’m trying to do here.” It was a battle they were never going to win, though, not on their own. In the last three months, Agnethea had been avoiding coming to grips with the reality that it was probably one they weren’t going to win at all, no matter how hard they try, and therein lay the hardest truth of all. Abomination in the eyes of the King as they may be, they were nevertheless abominations in fact; Young Luther and his cabal of likeminded fiends had proven that once and for all, and with such brutal, visceral beauty.
No being under King’s Will was meant to’ve survived for so long with all that hatred and rage boiling through them. No being at all.
Agnethea continued again, after another pause, yet again pleased Garth was biding his time. That moment, he was humming some terribly catchy tune and tapping out a rhythm on his knees. “Some of my … brethren … are treating Ickford as a smorgasbord. Not everyone who lives here is Ironed up, Master Nickels, not that it truly matters one way or the other. They prey on gearhead, wardog and civilian alike. In small numbers, to be sure, lest they drive a nail in the coffin overnight, but frequently enough for there to be whispers. And there is the … the other matter.”
Young Luther. Young Luther was the other matter, and to see a woman well over ten thousand years old stutter and stammer and look so patently aghast and disgusted at the same time was akin to seeing a unicorn; you thought they might exist, you hoped they did, but when you were confronted with one, it was the weirdest goddamn thing in the Universe and you suddenly realized after looking for so long that you had no fucking idea what to do with the goddamn thing.
It‘d be a long time coming before Garth knew he could close his eyes without seeing that chalk white face, that precious-angel looking five year old countenance, and those dead, dead eyes. Those pale feet, coated in the sluggish black blood of slain gearheads.
“Something tells me if I came to you and said ‘I can’t kill anyone but Young Luther’, you’d be totally okay with that, even if it meant the eventual death of Ickford.” Garth suppressed a shiver. Talking about Obsidian Golems and Young Luther a
nd all they represented had flipped the mood from hot to Arctic.
A quick, wry smile laced with abject sorrow flickered on Agnethea’s Queenly mien. “You are not wrong, Master Nickels. Not wrong at all. And here is why.”
Garth contemplated taking his weapons off so he could lean all the way back, then changed his mind. Given his track record with ancient beings under The Dome and his piss-poor ability to see what was right in front of his face, there was more than a small chance that he was being blind yet again.
Settling for adjusting his posture, Garth rolled a hand grandly in Agnethea’s direction. “Please, tell me.”
***
Honest Horace’s House o’ Hosiery was a huge structure, easily one of the largest in the whole of Ickford; unlike the rest of the fabrication places in this particular part of Agnethea’s hand-built city, Harry’s covered an entire city block and rose up for three solid stories, dominating the competition by size alone.
DarkEye gave him the identities and owners’ names of the other fabrication plants in the area out of hand, which Garth automatically dismissed. He had yet to find a way to tell the blasted implant to weed out all but the most pertinent information, suspecting even as he wished he could that there was no way to do so because the implant belonged on a goddamn horse and not on a human being; according to Agnethea, Gearmen had a helmet with bits as were capable of doing as he demanded, and also that she knew nowhere other than the most obvious place to find one. She had gone on to look rather jealously at the greatest of her hard-won prizes clutched in his hands before agreeing –albeit with immense difficulty- that he would need it more than she ever could.
Agnethea hadn’t exactly given the brass-and-gearbound Book up freely, but she had recognized sending a lone assassin against her own kind was a special sort of stupid so after much handwringing and looking off into the distance thoughtfully, give it up she had.
