by Lee Bond
While Dave waited for his newest patron to answer, he poured the fish a drink, all the while wondering what sort of strange thing was happening –or was about to happen- in his little bar.
More importantly, Dave was wondering if it were worth the effort of … the bartender pushed the drink across the bar top to the fish.
Best to wait. It were always best to wait and see.
Garth hoisted the glass in his good hand and stared critically at the amber miracle before him. Inhaling the fresh scent of barley and hops and imagining the brewery from whence the pint before him had come from filled him with a poignant longing for home.
“Do you know, Dave, how long it’s been since I’ve had a proper beer?” Garth took a tentative first sip and wanted to weep, actually weep, for joy. The amber liquid rolling across his tongue and down his throat was one of the best he’d ever tasted. Well, since flinging himself thirty thousand years into the future, of course. In comparison to an actual beer brewed by an actual brewery, what he held in his hand barely rated, but … beer was beer. Nothing he’d tasted on the worlds he’d been too held the same kind of hoppy goodness.
All on account of Trinity being a serious lame-ass.
Over in the corner, the band reached some kind of conclusion with their song.
“No, I don’t.” Dave looked sidelong at Jimmy at his crew. They were breaking out their Dark Iron containers, slamming them onto the heavy oak table and cheering the success of their fresh kill. The other crews spread throughout the bar eyed the liquid hungrily, eyes flicking back and forth. Oh he well and truly hated Jimmy, had asked time and again for the man not to dole out their prize on the premises, specifically because the other crews who frequented his establishment whilst traveling through these parts started doing what they were doing now.
Dave eyed the fish. It were well obvious the lad was fresh from Blackened Moor Door, and that Jimmy had some sort of plan, just as it were obvious –to Dave, at least- that there was far more about the new fish than were, well, than were obvious.
And that had the bartender interested, oh yes it did indeed. It’d been a long, long time since something new had happened in the bar and Dave were a bit ashamed to admit he was leaning towards allowing Jimmy the luxury of doing as he planned, simply to see.
Getting there, though, well. That’d have the other crews currently lounging about the establishment –very unsubtly eyeing up Jimmy’s prize-winning canisters of Kingsblood- worked up to a fever pitch, wouldn’t it just? Decisions, decisions.
Dave thought long and hard on what he truly wanted, then came to a decision that fell right in the middle betwixt curiosity and experience; relatively speaking, it were best to let Jimmy do as he planned –as the gearhead was going to do it come hell or high water anyways- than to actively halt the looker ahead of time. From there, it’d be a simple matter of riding out whatever storm came rolling through Kingspawn, and if things got too far out of hand?
Well, there was an option. One he liked about as much as drinking a glassful of mud, but some of the gaggles present did have the look of those who might run away, essentially forcing his hand on the matter of how best to deal with things regardless of better options.
He surreptitiously touched a brass button in his pocket. Probably the last one of it’s kind anywhere in Arcade City –indeed, outside a museum in Arcadia, for that matter- the button … the button was a call to arms for the Gearmen patrolling the chaotic world the kingdom had become in the King’s absence.
A single tap warned the Gearmen that there was trouble a-brewing. Another tap would have them as wore the Geared Armor screaming their way to the Kingspawn Pub a galvanized rush, oh yes it would. Dave didn’t want that, neither, but needs must; instinct said he should be prepared to have them Gearmen coming to his hidey-hole at the edge of the kingdom, and so Dave would obey. Summoning the proper constabulary to his fine establishment held its own risks, but it were easier to deal with two men in tiktok armor than a roomful of angry addicts.
Again, a brawl and Gearmen were preferable to … to anything … he might be called upon to do himself.
Garth drank half the glass and belched cheerily. “Only thing that burps better than beer is bacon, Dave. And … it’s been longer than Man has roamed the stars. Beer me.” He finished the beer and handed the empty glass to Dave.
“If I may, squire,” Dave filled refilled Nickels’ glass slowly, “if I may give you a bit of warning. Nicked Jimmy is a poison pill, friend, and if you’re serious about becoming a Kingkiller, I encourage you to move posthaste to another crew. As in, go and talk to any one of the men at the other tables. Sometime in the next hour or so. I know them other folks well enough, and they’re always glad to have a fresh lad as knows his business.”
“What happens then?” Garth drank deep.
Dave jerked his head at the table where Jimmy was holding court. “That is a lot of Iron, Nickels. More than some of these other crews have seen at any one time. He’s a bit of a black legend around these parts. Rumors abound about the status of old crews, but since Arcade City is as big and as dangerous as it is, there’s never proof. He always says ‘why, my old crew left and ran away with the lion’s share of all my hard work, friends, leaving me with naught by the dregs’. And so, gut instinct or no, they leave him be.”
“That, and because he’s stuffed to the tits full of crudey-crude, as the nutbag calls it.” The booze was sinking into his system. Garth remembered the last time he’d gotten drunk. In Kuwait. With Griffin. Ah, that’d been back before everything had gone completely sour. “And probably harder to kill than a Big King, if push came to shove.”
Dave nodded, handed a waitress a few mugs of beer, saying, “Aye, true. Now, back to the Iron on that table.”
“The other crews,” Garth pointed them out as they drank their beers and eyed Jimmy’s prize, “are seriously considering trying to take whatever they can from Nicked Jimmy and you reckon it’ll take another hour of drinking before they get up their courage, yes?”
Dave went to answer, but suddenly, Nicked Jimmy was there, at the bar, a shot glass of inky black liquid in one hand. He leered at the bartender, nodding and smiling like a maddened viper until the bartender hied himself hither to further away.
From his new vantage point, Dave polished glasses and watched on with interest, hating himself. Jimmy was doing as Jimmy wanted, and god damn him, Dave could not help but eagerly await what happened next; fresh from the outside and reeking of martial skill and all that came along with such knowledge, Garth the Fish was a man who had to have them legendary Outside implants all throughout his body.
Few got to see what happened to an outsider with implants when they were introduced to Kingsblood. In his many, many years, it were something Dave had never seen, and so he held his tongue and waited.
“What’re you and the publican chin-wagging about, fishy-fish?” Jimmy wrapped an arm around his blacksmith’s shoulders.
The stench of hot iron was nearly unbearable. Heat boiled from every square inch of Nicked Jimmy’s exposed skin and Garth wanted nothing more than to pull away from the gearheaded looker. The burbling shot glass full of Vicious Elixir in the man’s hand beckoned, spiky, inky black tendrils of the stuff lashing lazily against the rim of the shot glass. Garth clamped down on suddenly bilious guts.
Everything had been leading up to this point. It’d been obvious from the moment Nicked Jimmy had started calling him ‘my blacksmith’. It was an inevitable reality that if you wanted to run with a crew, you had to drink the Kingsblood down, and it was something –loathe as he was to admit it- he’d been contemplating ever since … ever since learning just what the stuff was.
The truth of the matter, the real, dark truth was that he was surrounded by Cloud. It was infinitely more stable and less aggressive than the one in Gorensystem, but there was no getting away from the fact that it was everywhere, except possibly in the air they breathed and the food and drink they consumed, which was why he’d
so gratefully chugged down one and a half beers in rapid succession; if the King’s intent was to have everyone infused with his unholy concoction, then there wouldn’t be any such thing as an Estate, or any hint at the normal life you could have in Arcade City, if you so chose.
No, if the King’s goal was to have a massive population infested and infected with his fucked up steampunk Dark Iron weirdness, that was precisely what he’d have, and in goddamn short order.
That suffusion of Dark Iron was how the King kept an iron grip on tech, on how he kept anything he didn’t like from working. With every square inch –whether you could see it or not- of Arcade City’s domed existence filled with particulate, the King was just this side of actual godhood; proper control over such limitless nanotech would –in every way- be indistinguishable.
Vicious Elixir, which Jimmy wiggled back and forth, an enticing lure, was a short cut. Possibly. The … ‘benefits’ … were undeniable. Strength and speed to match a Kin’kithal. Cunning and a kind of feral brilliance. Plus, and this was the biggest advantage, relative immortality.
Garth took the shot glass in his hand, skin crawling at the hungry heat oozing through the glass. A single ounce of the stuff held millions of Cloud grains, each one a tiny factory capable of reassembling matter to whatever archetype the King deemed proper. A quick swig and the stuff’d be inside him. But would it even work? His body had already undergone atomic level reassembly, and by a method far more … intensive than employed by the crudey-crude.
Without access to quadronium-spun powers, living inside Arcade City would be simple enough, if all he wanted to do was live. But he’d come to the FrancoBritish homeland for a purpose. He’d come to see how and why the King had been identified as a threat by Bravo.
And then, if necessary, bring the whole fucking thing to an end.
Garth knew the how of that classification. A Cloud this stable was infinitely more dangerous than the one on Gorensystem.
There was still the what. What, precisely, did the King plan on doing with this Universe-threatening technology?
Nicked Jimmy’s impatient eagerness, his ravenous glee, was a living animal. That psychic pressure alone would be enough to force anyone into drinking, if only to be spared such gruesome consideration.
Garth realized everyone in the bar –opposing crews and all- were staring at him with the same hot, fiendishly excited looks in their eyes. Many were panting and licking their lips.
“Go on, fishy-fish.” Nicked Jimmy smiled indulgently. “Only hurts the first time. After that, it goes down smooth. Well,” he turned to the crowd, raised his voice to raucous levels, “as smooth as the crudey-crude can go down, am I right?”
Everyone laughed, thick, guttural mirth inextricably linked with sorrow. They all remembered their first time, how Kingsblood had ripped down their throats, how –in some cases- it’d shredded and eradicated pre-existing cybernetic implants and augments. How, in all cases, the burning hot metallic agony had seared through flesh and bone like an endless river of merciless cruelty, how midway through being bonded to the Dark Iron their very souls had seemed to wither and burn beneath the blowtorch of rebirth. They all remembered their first time, and in every case, no matter how hungry they were for more of the same, they wished they’d said no. When they came to, their hearts and minds were full of wrath and rage and the only way to quiet that endless surge was to find a king –or any beast at all- and kill it, and their glorious absentee monarch had made certain that world was full of such … distractions.
Garth read that off the crowd and steeled himself. There was no fucking way he was going to partake of the Vicious Elixir.
No matter what. No matter the cost. No matter the risk.
“What’s the matter, fishy-fish?” Jimmy accepted the shot glass back with an angry frown. Then he smirked. Didn’t matter now, did it?
There were ways and ways to hook a fish on the old crudey-crude, yes indeed, there was.
“Feelin’ a little self-conscious for your first time? No matter, we can take you around back, hold your hair out of the way, that sort of thing. It’ll be real quick-like.” Jimmy flashed the Fish a quick, comforting smile.
“I…” Garth held up his hands. “It’s a big … big decision.”
Nicked Jimmy narrowed his eyes broodingly. People denied themselves the first sip all the time, mistakenly thinking they could be a Kingkiller without the Dark Iron coursing through their veins. They thought that right up until the very moment they stood toe to toe with their first Big King.
Then they usually stopped thinking. If you had a fresh fish in your crew, if you had someone you thought could make it in the game but you didn’t have Kingsblood, you kept the fish away from the King. That was a rule. The King could smell a fishy-fish and went out of his way to stomp that fishy flat.
The first sip was always free. That were how it worked. That way, you could have your fish right there at the front. You could arrange for the fish to get squashed. That way they’d need more.
It were a perfect system. It’d worked on Nicked Jimmy and hundreds of thousands besides him over the years. And whether Fishy-Fish the Blacksmith realized it or not, it was going to work on him, as well.
All eyes on them, Nicked Jimmy raised the shot glass high in the air, tilting and turning the Kingsblood until it glittered like a dark star ‘neath the torchlight. Then he slammed it down his own throat. Cruel barbs tried to prick and cut on the way down the old gullet, but Nicked Jimmy was close on to bein’ one of them hated and loathed grey-skins himself, hey?
Some tension bled out of the room, but not enough.
Jimmy turned a black-stained, cracked smile on his pet smith. “It’s all right, fishy-fish. As the freshest prize, as my brand-new blacksmith, we can wait. You with your thoughtful eyes staring up at The Dome and at the mud beneath your feet. You can think on it, maybe watch us bag another big boy or two, hey? Then you’ll see it’s the only way. Come on, then, fishy-fish, sit at the table with us here and tell us what the outside world has been getting up to.”
The word ‘blacksmith’ had the other crews in the pub whispering furtively to themselves, and it was good.
Garth trailed after Nicked Jimmy, grabbing a fresh beer from the bar as he did so. He’d managed to jump the first hurdle, but that didn’t mean anything. Sooner or later, Jimmy’s polite façade would be replaced with that of the raving lunatic he was in truth and the whole course of the evening would change.
Priority one was getting through the night, which meant checking his drink and food for the literal Mickey. As long as he kept an eye out, he’d be fine. With fierce Vicious Elixir being the Mickey on tap, how hard could it be to catch that shit in cold beer? It looked like it tasted awful.
Priority two was sneaking the fuck away from Nicked Jimmy and his gaggle of psycho steampunk rejects. He gave zero fucks about how allegedly dangerous the wilds were for normal folk, not when there was freaks like Jimmy and crew to contend with. It’d be hard, hiding himself from madmen like Jimmy and his crew, but then again, hiding from Kith and Kin back in the day had been no picnic, either.
***
“No.” Dave threw his hands up in the air, keeping careful eye on Nicked Jimmy and Nickels the Fish. Interested as he might be in seeing an implanted Outsider wed to the Dark Iron, he held no desire to be complicit in that agonizing transformation. “No way.”
Staunch Mel held syringe copper and glass syringe full of Kingsblood in a hand. “Jimmy says it’s the only way.”
“I will not have you forcing Kingsblood on that fish in my establishment, Melsbeth.” Dave stepped away, eyes still on Nickels. The man was regaling them with some story or other about the outside world; unawares of the drama playing out behind him, the fool was waving his hands and laughing loudly and enjoying himself in high fashion.
“Ohhhh.” Melsbeth crooned, wiggling the syringe back and forth in her hands. “I won’t be doing it, you will be.”
“No.” Dave said halfheart
edly. “He’ll change his mind, eventually, you all do. Give him time. When he sees a Big King …”
“Already seen one. Saw us do the kill, saw the Vicious Elixir being made. Our fishy-fish blacksmith knows what’s in store and thinks he don’t need what we want him to have.” Personally, Mel couldn’t understand that. The fish had seen and was still saying no.
He were well away from the Estate now, and goin’ back that way as a lowly fish were impossible. The fish knew what were coming and had to see by that very same knowledge that there weren’t no way around it. The only choices left to the fish were slamming the crudey-crude voluntarily or …
Or bein’ held down, kicking and screaming while your compatriots chanted low, dark words and then the Kingsblood spilled hot, painful, razor sharp edges down your gullet and straight into your soul.
She’d been one of the people Dave was talking about, one of the ones who’d said no to the first taste. And her first looker had been okay with that, knowing as she had that the first look at a proper King in all his metallic glory would have her changing her mind in a heartbeat. Her first looker, Missy Stone, well, she’d had that shot glass ready to roll and Mel had slammed the sick hot metal liquid down her gullet in the blink of an eye.
But Nickels the Fishy-Fish … he’d seen. And was still saying no. It made no sense.
“Doesn’t matter, Melsbeth.” Dave blanched as Nicked Jimmy turned a not-so-casual eye his way. “No.”
Mel crooned again, taking one of Dave’s clenched hands in her own. She pried it open easily and placed the syringe against his palm. “Understand this, Dave. Nicked Jimmy knows the other crews are going to go for our crudey-crude. Knew it the moment he walked in. That’s not a problem. Happens all the time. But when our fish said no with all them watching, well, Jimmy’s in a tight spot, no? Embarrassed our black-hearted looker to his devilish toes. Had to say our fish is a blacksmith to make certain that when they do go for it, they go out of their way to not kill the man, which all them others will work on, but this is where the real problem lies. Our blacksmith fishy knows how to fight. Very well, he does, even without the crude. He’s going to get involved no matter what Jimmy says or does and when that happens, our blacksmith is going to get hisself dead for true. Know what happens then?”
