by Lee Bond
“Come now, you great big bag of old metal bones.” Chad did turn around, and there she were, the nasty old bitchbot as had beat the vigor right out of him, all swollen up with the full majesty and might of a Mistress. Chad took a long pull on his fag and damn near moaned in pure delight at the burning hot sensation of all those delicious poisons coursing through his lungs. “’ow’s about you fuck right off, yeah?”
Taint let loose with another stentorian squeal of robotic frenzy, sounding exactly like a twenty thousand ton freight train coming to a crashing halt. Her viciously clawed hands raked across tabletops as she came towards him, ripping and rending through things that reminded Chad of terrible times inside the walls of his prison. “How dare you talk to me that way? I am your Mistress! You will resume the work you were made for!”
Chad drew on the ciggy, drew and drew and drew on it until it were nothing but ash betwixt his fingers. On his shoulder, Wee Miss Bliss clapped and cheered. He flicked the butt at his jailor’s wide forehead, aiming right for one of those bright red lights that blazed like the wrath of Hell itself.
Where Mistress Taint’s scream of rage had been loud before, the blackened wrath erupting out of her at being treated thusly was louder still; the walls of Chad’s prison shook and rattled so greatly that great chunks of old brick and mortar broke loose and fell all about the two. One huge section of wall, big as nasty old Taint herself, fell atop the old bitchbot’s bobbing, weaving head and cracked in two, knocking the mad Nanny to the ground in the process.
Taint’s large, whirring chassis immediately sprouted two more arms, which the steam-driven assemblage used to pull herself upright as quickly as she’d fallen. New hands fussing with her body as she rose once more to her full height, Nanny Taint resumed, head tilted to one side; some servomechanisms had been broken in the fall and would need seeing to. When she had the time.
“You will do as you are told!” Taint bellowed heatedly.
“Nope.” Chad winked at Bliss once more. This were his last stand, and though he were feeling well good and all sorts, he knew he weren’t going to get free of Taint. She had him thoroughly trapped, that much was dead certain.
But what he could do was look outside upon bold, wondrous, glorious Arcadia one last time before the old bitch decided to do for him properly. The strength and bravery that Wee Miss Bliss had given him was only enough to take that one last loving look, and Chadsik al-Taryin, ex-assassin and reborn hero, would gladly spend that strength, all so he could have one final good memory to cling to before he, too, moved on.
Chad stared at Taint, Taint returned his calculating gaze with one full of violence and the promise of an eternity of agony. The FrancoBrit licked his lips and waited; it were obvious from the way Nanny Taint stood there, mechanisms ticking and tocking and moving beneath her great metal bosom in such specific ways, precisely what the robo-twat were planning.
Chad spun on his heel and leaped for the windows just as Mistress Taint lurched forward with a shocking amount of speed. He felt a curious disappearance of weight on his shoulder as he flew towards the dazzlingly bright lights and sorrow sped quickly through him; Wee Miss Bliss had jumped free, throwing herself right into the mouth of the oncoming metallic beast, all to give him some time, some time to look outside, to see what was worth seeing, to see what he’d been missing the whole time.
As Bliss was jammed down Taint’s throat, Chad smashed headlong into the windows.
And opened his eyes.
The cybernetic hero peered through the thinnest of slits into the room he was truly in. “Well, Crikey,” he whispered to himself as quietly as he dared, lest he startle the assembled Mistresses at the far end of the room –they were currently clustered around a whole huge bank of monitors and were squabbling amongst themselves-, “I ain’t expectin’ this at all.”
***
Dave the Bartender had to admit to himself that although the purpose behind his most recent visit to Green Terrace far to the North was –relatively speaking- all his fault and no two ways about it, he enjoyed the visit; rolling into the tiny little Estate –more of a hamlet, really, given its population- was to know that he was on a bit of holiday.
And if he were more honest with himself, the absolute joy and pleasure on his glassblower’s face when he trundled into town on his mule pulled-cart, well … the lovely Miss Habersham gave as much pleasure in return, didn’t she just?
Dave’s face flushed deep red at the thought of Annalise Havisham. Beyond being expertly skilled in the art of glassblowing –the younger woman kept talking about moving to Ickford where the rest of Arcade City’s ‘lords and ladies of the gear’ would be able to see her skill, a passion Dave found harder and harder to quiet each visit- Annalise was almost divinely skilled in lovemaking. He hadn’t been tempted by someone quite so thoroughly since … well.
For more years than was decent to mention.
Mood spoiled as quickly as it’d risen, Dave stared gloomily at his mule’s backside. It was the only such animal in all of Arcade City, though no one had ever thought to ask, leastways not those who lived in Green Terrace, what sort of beast it was and where it’d come from.
They, like everyone else whose eyes fell upon the sour-tempered, shaggy, grey-haired beast, automatically assumed that where there was one, there were others. Many, and this included gearheads and wardogs alike, first offered to purchase Mortimer the Mule from him, seeing in the strong-legged animal the same benefits that the bartender reaped. When that failed, typically, all hell broke loose in short order, and Dave did feel truly sorry about how things tended to fall out, but all he wanted out of life was to run a quiet pub.
Dave went to take quick stock of his location, a morose sigh on his lips. He was almost to home and still, his traitorous mind fell backwards into the past. Oh, aye, the whole of it were well his fault. Terrible images of the vicious assault of that fish, howling and screaming for everyone to run as fast as they could, to escape by any means necessary. That, and them gearheads, all laughing and jeering in response, even as their heads were torn from bodies, limbs ripped from bodies.
“It weren’t my fault.” Dave replied to his nagging conscience. “Too many high-level gearheads about. Some may’ve survived, might’ve got away.”
That weren’t the truth, and Dave the so-called Bartender knew damn well it weren’t, but he had to keep reminding himself of the particulars of his self-enforced imprisonment in the pub that’d become his home, and that, wherever Garth Nickels the Fish was, he were someone else’s problem now.
Mortimer the mule flicked his tail and let loose with a quick bray of happiness. This old mule had been making the journey to Green Terrace –an Estate in which an inordinate number of skilled glassblowers were born every few decades- for a considerably long time, and had the route memorized as keenly as his driver; they were rounding the bend and were soon to be on the final stretch towards home. Home for the mule meant a shiny red apple with crisp skin and sweet flesh, while for the bartender, it meant the simple joy of unloading several dozen crates of new glassware.
And that was another reason Dave had kept to himself when putting a stop to things would’ve been a fairly simple thing; where Kingspawn Pub had once been a last-ditch effort at hiding, a place to lay low until things blew over and a veritable prison for one such as he, in time, it’d become his home, and the base act of putting away new glassware, into which his carefully crafted beers would be deposited for the delight of anyone brave enough to make the journey to his doorstop, filled him with content.
‘twas a contentment he’d not felt in…
The two options, stopping Nicked Jimmy from spiking the fish’s drink or stopping the resultant Specter from killing all them gearheads? Strictly speaking, neither ‘option’ had had any good points at all. Dave sighed. He’d spent a goodly portion of the trip to Green Terrance thinking these very same depressing thoughts, coming out of his misery only long enough to please and be pleased by lovely Havisham of the gree
n eyes and pale, freckled skin.
“Might as well travel down this road one last time, hey Mortimer?” Dave called to the mule, and the mule’s tail switched back and forth. Good old Mortimer, the bartender thought, always willing to listen to an old man maunder about his problems. “And so I shall, then, hey? There must be some justification for staying my hand I’ve missed.”
Preventing Jimmy from turning his blacksmith fish into some sort of Ironed-up smith –something that never worked for long, as no matter how careful and cautious the dose, sooner or later, the crudey-crude in you demanded more, and in ever greater doses- would’ve drawn the instant and immediate attention of all the other crews, which, in turn, would’ve resulted in precisely the same carnage as had already happened, though with him, Dave the boring Bartender, in the center of the maelstrom; Jimmy hadn’t been one to tolerate ‘insubordination’ and thus would’ve reacted with cruelty and violence as sure as the King’s Will filled Arcade City with light.
Dave truly did not like fights in his establishment, no sir, not at all.
Now, if he had intervened –being forced in the process to use overwhelming force, given the gaggles that evening- days or even weeks would’ve passed before all those different elite gaggles got missed, but missed they would become, eventually. Naturally and obviously, none would mourn the disappearance of Nicked Jimmy and those who fell into his Dark Iron orbit, but Mistar Chang and Sally Ahoy had been decent enough in their own foul ways. All-Points Eric had been too new in the Big King Killing game to matter one way or the other, but he’d shown enough promise early on to warrant running his own crew.
Yet notice would be had, and sooner or later, word would reach the Estates, and from there, wandering Gearman astride their great iron horses would hear The Tale of the Missing Gearheads.
Compelled by this mystery, them as wore the ‘copper’ longcoats would come looking for answers, either out of their own curiosity, or compelled by the Matrons themselves; though Ickford had broken King’s Gauntlet into a million pieces, still the Matrons followed their programming. Of that Dave was most certain. Gearmen would’ve come knocking. Under those circumstances, making Gearmen go away was a whole other kettle of awful, yes indeed.
Oh yes, oh yes for certain.
On the other hand, Specter. Dave wasn’t entirely certain or confident…
Mortimer the Mule pulled up short and their precious cargo of breakables tinkled and chimed forebodingly in their heavy wooden crates. A curse word on his lips and thin wooden switch in his hands, Dave was about to lash his scurrilous draft animal when his eyes caught sight of what he’d missed with his internal blathering.
Kingspawn Pub was just down the road a bit, no more than six hundred feet away. From a distance, it never failed to take Dave’s breath away. Before, when he’d been who he’d been, something like the old, three-story stone and wood establishment would’ve never caught his eye. Or held his heart, but in the eighty or so odd years he’d spent tending bar in the middle of the wastelands, he’d grown to love every inch. Took hard work, getting stone and wood like that, didn’t it just, especially the wood. Wood was hard, both in the literal and figurative sense, harder to make the stone or any of the other things in the pub.
Which was why, when he left Kingspawn, he made certain of two key things.
One, that no one, on no account, no matter how hard they tried nor who they were, could enter Kingspawn Pub. Took a lot of doing, that. Dave generally opted for simple foreboding that grew and grew and grew until those who thought to sup on his fine beers and rare spirits whilst he were out and about felt as though they were treading either on holy ground or were about to enter a haunted house. In this instance, though, with Gearmen having been inside his shop asking questions, Dave had gone a step further by making the doors and windows … unresponsive in addition to the aforementioned terror.
Why, it’d take a Big ‘Un rap-rap-rapping on the doors or windows to get either to budge, it would.
Two? That he always made damned certain the fireplaces were left off. He’d forgotten once, and had come back to his beautiful pub ablaze, with a handful of interested gearheads standing about outside, wondering cheerily on whether or not there would be anything left to drink once the place was reduced to cinder and ash, fear and loathing offset by powerful interest.
Dave stared and stared at Kingspawn Pub, hoping to his very toes that he was sharing an hallucination with Mortimer the Mule.
He was not.
The brilliant white plume of smoke trickling from a chimney stabbed through the bright blue sky were a shocking exclamation point that he had himself a guest.
“It would be well difficult to get in there.” Dave muttered to Mortimer, who brayed his response softly. “Easier I would say to hop a Wall. There hain’t but a few as would spend the effort, and I know I won’t be happy to see a one of them.”
Mortimer made a noise that sounded for all the world like an exasperated sigh and started moving again, setting the glassware in their boxes to chiming once more.
Play-act as he might, Dave the not-quite-bartender bloody well knew there was in truth only a single type of person in all the world as would come out this way and also be the type to dig past his defenses wi’out taking down the whole pub:
A Mistress.
An uneasy feeling settled deep into Dave’s guts. His cover were well and truly blown, that much were a guarantee. Anyone else –e’en them Gearmen as had come- were easy to fiddle with, memory-wise, though it did take a special touch.
But not a Mistress. No, them as called themselves Matrons but were oft referred to as Mistresses or Nannies were summat else entirely. It took no genius –and Dave did not consider himself one, not even on the best day he’d ever had- to see the road ahead.
It’d been a long time since he’d been in the presence of Mistress. The very day of the Gothic Descent of the King, in point of fact. A hundred years, almost –now he thought of it- almost to the very day that their glorious King had descended from his loft in The Dome to find his one and only True Son gone, the Armory black as a dead star.
Davram remembered that day, that vicious, bleak moment when their regal King –always a bit odd, always a bit strange, and you did have to remember to mind your P’s and Q’s around the monarch, oh yes you did- had appeared, screaming so loudly at the loss that very stones in the ground had vibrated.
They’d all been coming out of one of their favorite haunts, the Chesapeake Steed, a fine old watering hole catering to those of the Brigade with fine sensibilities and an even finer palate. There’d been him, Harland, Neddard, Abigaile, Mary Elizabeth and of course, Sonnensfeld, the Poet Brigadier. They’d all been flush with high spirits that night, for their world-renowned wordsmith had announced his intention to marry the aforementioned Mary Elizabeth.
Glorious, that. Of course, they’d all known –and for a terribly long time- that the Poet and the Warrior Princess were going to tie the knot. That’d been obvious from the moment the two had set eyes upon one another.
As Mortimer’s tail sashayed back and forth, Davram the ex-Brigadier’s lips quirked in sorrowful joy at that moment. Oh, they, the elite amongst the elite, they’d had such a great night in the Steed, drinking the finest whiskeys, supping on the most delicately cooked duck, all unaware that hours before, the Armory had gone black and their King had dropped to the earth like a missile. Nor had they known that their King had raged through the City, killing all of the Brigade his eyes fell upon, dashing brains from skulls, severing limbs from bodies, doing for the best and brightest of Arcade City like they were naught but blades of grass and he the man with the only scythe in town.
Why, in his fit of rage, King Barnabas Blake the One and Only had done for the last of the gearhead crews to ever make the journey to Arcadia, sweeping through the enclosure where they’d pitched valiant battle ‘gainst the shimmering platinum King, a feat which freed –or so Davram had heard in the intervening years- the glistening, shimmery be
ast to roam Arcadia as and when it chose.
And then?
Oh and then Barnabas Blake had arrived in the small square where the Chesapeake Steed shared a small gated enclosure with Isaac’s Smoke Shop.
Davram remembered the next bit with confounding and soul-shaking clarity. Many a night he’d tried to purge himself of what’d happened, only to fail. He could forget nothing. The best thing he’d found for himself was, well, to tend bar. In honor of those who’d fallen. There’d been times within the walls of Kingspawn Pub that’d hearkened close to those last few beautiful moments in the Steed, with him and his friends laughing and carousing, an eternal moment of divine happiness.
Never had there been a more perfect day, and though the gearheads and wardogs who came to his pub were the crudest of the crude, all full of twitches and jitters as the foulest of the Vicious Elixirs pumping through their cast-iron veins, he’d seen a few glimpses here and there of that day, pushing days into weeks and weeks into months as he hoped and prayed for just another hint, another glimmer of his long lost friends.
“Oh, aye.” Davram said to Mortimer as they pulled up to the side of the pub. “How can I forget that moment, walking out of the smoke shop, cigars at the ready, saucy joke on my lips?”
Davram couldn’t remember the joke he’d been about to assault Sonnensfeld with, but he did remember how eager he’d been to shock the poet. He remembered that, and walking out, handful of the best cigars –they’d cost him a pretty penny, too- at the ready, remembered looking across the courtyard. Sonnensfeld, head tilted back, laughing at something told to him obviously by Harland, who was clutching Neddard’s shoulder to keep from falling down. Abigaile and Mary Elizabeth stood off to the side, approving smiles on their faces.
Davram remembered all that, clear as day. Sonnensfeld –if his head hadn’t been pulled from his neck in the next second by a stupendously morose King- would’ve called it ‘The Last Good Day’ or something equally prosaic. But head torn from body was the next thing to take place, quickly followed by Harland falling to the ground, a shattered mess of broken bones, split skin and hot blood. Mary Elizabeth, paralyzed by the sight of her fiancé’s headless corpse, fell next, Kingly Scepter caving in the side of her head with a crack loud as a tree exploding in wintertime. Abigail fared best, managing to draw forth her shining platinum sword before the King had snapped his fingers in that way he did when he was working with the Will. Beautiful Abigail, Davram’s boon companion for nearly his entire journey from the outer rings to Arcadia, burst apart at the seams like a balloon too full of water.
