by Lee Bond
There were moments in Arcade City where opposing forces came to an almost magical understanding without saying a single word. Most of the time, this happened when two Kingkilling squads came across one another on the field whilst chasing their own summoned monarch; when two Kings came together, it was catastrophically bad because they … they meshed. Became a bigger King with better arms and armaments. When that happened, no matter how badly those two gaggles hated one another, they fought side by side, took the prize and split it fair and square. It happened other times as well, sure, because everyone with Kingsblood in their veins understood the need for expediency and, most of the time, thought long-term whenever possible.
This was one of those times.
The Specter grinned a maniacal grin as the Dark Iron barbs hooked under his skin grew a bit deeper, the spikes turned crueler. Garth feared he’d never be rid of the Specter. Then he worried that he’d stop worrying. If the infection found a way to root deeper, cracked through the quadronium shielding and into the inner workings of the OS properly … Arcade City could very well have itself a new monarch in no time at all.
“Come on then, bitches.” The Specter planted his feet and waited. “Let’s dance. I hope you’ve all got more than one life left.” Somewhere deep inside, where Garth N’Chalez was still capable of rational thought, the Kin’kithal prayed that he somehow lost, prayed that the assembled metalheads arrayed around the room, eyes glinting with calculated calm, came up with a way to bring him down.
The Specter was a bad thing. The worst thing. The Specter was what Trinity wanted because It wanted everything subdued, every thing standing between It and the destruction of the M’Zahdi Hesh destroyed so that when it was time, It could override the Engine’s controls.
If Nicked Jimmy and his fair-weather friends didn’t manage to bring The Specter down and if the allegedly impervious and unassailable quadronium implants failed to deal with the invading nanoplague, that was exactly what Trinity was going to get. Because Arcade City would burn, The Dome would fall, and The Specter would fall across the stars one last time. Only this time … this time he feared there’d be no reason to claw his way back to the light.
Because now The Specter knew what could be gained, and there was one thing that The Specter wanted above all else.
Power. Where the Kith and Kin had been excess incarnate, hunger perfected, their children, the scions of their blood, were those things as well, only exponentially so.
The Dark Iron squirmed in excitement.
Nicked Jimmy came at him.
So did everyone else.
12. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Chadsik stared up at the machine that his father had built, the machine that allowed him to pull … well, they were, strictly speaking, souls, right? Chad stared at the Soul Machine, moodily reflecting that he at long last understood where the artistic bent that’d plagued him in the outside world had come from.
For if there was anything in this Universe that was more art than science, it was the art of pulling iterations of himself from the foamy sea of what’d once been and throwing them into the Soul Machine, where his Old Dad would do summat strange to ‘em, clad them all in metal to make them cold and unfeeling. Then off they’d go to Trinity, and all to keep the machine mind from being a right twat when it come to The Dome.
Chadsik couldn’t remember how he’d done it the first time, way back when he’d been just a wee scrog, nor could he even believe that that first friend of his had been a fully … what … summoned version of himself from a long-destroyed Unreality; the machine in front of him, all shiny brass and copper, with the occasional dash of platinum and gold here and there, was the only way it could be done now, and it required the passion of artist to get working right.
But that first time … that first time, it’d been done with naught save his own wonderful mind. A wonderful mind which were mostly ruined now, Chad reckoned. What with all he’d been through and done and whatnot.
Chad did his best not to think about that long ago proper friend. What his dear Old Dad had done had been well terrible and was a haunted memory best left buried.
The ex-assassin turned artist stared through the guts of the Soul Machine right into the heart of a thing that had, once upon a time and long, long time ago, been a bloke that might’ve properly been a Chadsik al-Taryin one day and wanted to scream. He wanted to scream long into the night, wanted to escape from the hellhole he’d inadvertently teleported into, wanted to be free from his maddened Father’s even madder demands but most of all, he wanted to be well away from mad Mistress Taint.
The Nanny AI nattered on, a non-stop stream of jibber jabber about very little, mindless platitudes and quotes that Chad would bet his robotic bellend had never been said by his Dear Old Dad; from what little he remembered of the be-crowned twat, King Blake had been more of a silent, broody-brood type than the sort of monarch as ran about shouting pithy things from the rooftops. Silent, yet prone to very terrific displays of Kingly wroth when he got worked up, which … were quite often.
“Look, you silly robo-twat,” Chad hollered vociferously from his perch by the machine, “shut your barmy mouth.”
“Language, Chadsik.” Mistress Taint replied with shocked scandal. Then she shot him with a Taser. When she was convinced that her young charge wasn’t going to try and hit her again –oh, now that had ended quite poorly, yes indeed, yes it had- the robotic AI clattered over and peered down into Chad’s nearly colorless eyes. Oh, the poor dear was just full of such anger and upset. It was, the King had told her once, the temperament of an artist. You had to forgive them the excesses of their emotion, if only so they could create their masterpieces. “You do know how your Father hates the cusswords.”
Chad worked his jaw muscles until he could speak. Laying there on the ground, staring into the whirling, twirling madness that was Mistress Taint, he said, very clearly and with full awareness of what might happen, “You can suck a dick, Mistress Taint.”
A rigid smile clicked and clacked onto the Rube Goldbergian contraption that was Mistress Taint’s face. Always testing, was Chad. Always testing, always pushing the envelope. She looked into the Soul Machine, wondering why it was that their artist got so worked up when he neared the end of a project.
The AI had no understanding of nor any desire to come to any sort of understanding about the nature of souls or of organic consciousness. The thought of being bound to some kind of overriding essence that had people like Chadsik willing to risk torture and punishment for the sake of some moral statement was utterly nonsensical. On the face of it, though, Mistress Taint understood more than a little about Chadsik’s nature, knew well enough that the man had more than his fair share of … of souls … and … wondered why he wasn’t pleased at the opportunities he’d been given to free himself of that additional burden.
Mistress Taint allowed the smile on her face to grow as she brandished a cattle prod. She crooned soothingly, unable to understand why the soft gentle sounds that had worked on Chad when he’d been a small sprat failed so abysmally now. She tapped him gently on the chest with the spitting end of the prod and waited for the shouting to stop. “Now, be a dear, Chadsik, and finish up with this piece, yes? You know very well that your Father cannot get started until you’ve finished this production run, and you’ve got quite a few pieces left before that happens.”
From his vantage point on the ground, Chad stared through the thick glass trapping the soul of someone he might’ve once been. Each evocation took on a different form, and after they were coated in metal and filled with electronic gadgets and piled up with weapons, they became Universally unique killing machines. It was why no two Enforcers were the same, why each man or woman or –as in the case of Gwyleh Ronn- Offworlder had the exact same scope of powers, the exact same weapons, or even, when you got right down to it, the same Suit: every soul yanked from a previous Unreal Universe was different.
Most weren’t even FrancoBritish. There were blokes
as had been AfroEgyptian. EuroJapanese. American. Offworld. Oh, so many Offworld Chads having lived divergently evolved lives in a universe where there’d never been any such thing as tea, or biscuits, or a mad monarch named Blake.
Chad shook his head and crossed his arms defiantly. He didn’t want to do this anymore. “My Father…”
Mistress Taint raised her cattle prod high into the air, arcs of electricity throwing harsh blue light across the expanse of Chad’s workshop. She pointed it at her unruly charge’s pale white flesh. “Watch your tone, boy. You may speak ill of me all you wish, you may say all the awful and horrid things your petty little mind can come up with and all you’ll get is a lash or two of the blue lightning, but you say one word against your father who has done all of this wonder, and it shall go poorly. And,” Mistress Taint put on a sweet smile for Chad, “and in the end, after all the suffering, you will go ahead and do as you’ve been told anyways.”
“My Father,” Chad repeated sternly, “can also suck a dick.”
The FrancoBritish ex-assassin steeled himself for the pain. Mistress Taint’s whirling mad eyes lit up with electricity, and as Chad started howling, it seemed to him that there was the slightest hint of pleasure in those metal eyes.
***
Mistress Taint brought Chadsik a steaming cup of tea and made great pretense at looking through the glass windows to the outside world. It was where her poor dear liked to sit after he’d finished working on one of his masterpieces. In an unguarded moment of terrible vulnerability, he’d mentioned that he missed being down there in the streets with those who’d managed to work their way to Arcadia, missed the excitement and the adventure of it all. She rubbed a matronly hand through Chad’s snow-white hair and crooned.
“There’s a good boy, Chadsik.” She fussed with his shirt collar. “I do know it takes a lot out of you, making the frames of the Suits for your Father.”
Chad tried not to flinch from the Matron’s cold, skeletal hands and failed. They were gruesome things, they were, metal fingers attached to a metal body housing an artificial intelligence so cracked that were he about, his good friend Huey would be losing his shit. Then, fearing that Mistress Taint would somehow hear his thoughts, Chad stopped thinking about the only man he could call friend and took the proffered cup from his jailer.
Swallowing a mouthful of tea that Chad wished wasn’t so damned delicious, the ex-assassin said nothing. He resumed staring outside.
Arcadia had fallen on poor times, yes it had.
Chad took another mouthful of tea. Gods, how he loathed the fact that in all the places he’d been, there were only one place in the entire Unreal Universe to get a proper cuppa, and it was at the hands of the absolutely mad robot humming to herself at his side.
“When I left,” Chad said casually, tracing designs against the pane of glass.
Mistress Taint interrupted. “When you ran away.”
“When I left,” Chad turned to stare at Mistress Taint, glared at her weird robot peepers until a condescending grin click-clacked onto her face, “Arcadia was well proper. Now it’s all gone to shit. Wot ‘appened?”
“As I said, young master Chad,” Mistress Taint flung a curtain open so Chad could gaze fully on the City below, “when you ran …” here, she grinned again, “When you left, as you say, your Father was well and truly wounded to his very core. He lost all hope. Without you, son, without your mad, wonderful creations, there was nothing for him to do. He needed you. From the very moment he found you, from the second you proved yourself worthy of being the first of his Sons, our glorious King understood that you were a gift of Creation itself and knew in a twinkling the role you were to have in his Grand Undertaking.”
Chad pointed a scarred finger at the nearly ruined City. “My dear old da’s sorrow at me takin’ off for the hills does not explain ‘ow the wonderful clockwork world as was my stompin’ ground got turned into a fu … bloody warzone, now does it? I is knowin’ Blake loved this city more than anyfing else ‘e brought about, an’ even in the depths of ‘is grief, I cannot imagine ‘im lettin’ it fall apart like this.”
Once upon a time, Arcadia, had been home to wonders like Spiraling Court, a park with clockwork trees that’d been a joy to watch. Why, he’d wasted an entire afternoon watching an oak tree grow out of the ground, marveling at the way all the cogs and gears and pistons had fit so cunningly together.
Gone, now. Or so he reckoned; Mistress Taint wouldn’t let him have a pair of field glasses so he could get a better look, but Chad could see the area where Spiraling Court was supposed to be. There was too much devastation to imagine something as delicate as fragile clockwork trees remained.
Also gone was Furthering Square, where slightly less insane Matron AI’s had held celebratory parades and get-togethers in recognition of those strong and crazy enough to work their way from the outside in. A triumph worthy of a hundred celebrations, that; the slog to get from any one of the Estates ringing the walls was a rarity deserving of the highest praise. The only achievement worth more was killing the King. Well, Furthering Square with its bright pennants, big booming clock, wide open spaces and lovely coffee shops, that were all gone, too.
Not all of his favorites were gone. Alchemy Lane was still down there, where you could buy yourself some well wicked Dark Iron gadgets if you had the right price. Water House, where you brokered your winnings into something a little more … market ready still existed, though that was no surprise; if Old Missus Treems was still running the place, well, the first thing her mercenary mind had done was spend some of the silvery-pure Dark Iron she’d brokered for on tremendous battle-tank cannons, the only ones of their kind inside Arcadia limits. Great deterrents, those. Of inestimable value when you were the only repository in Arcadia where those as had done the proper ‘King’ could exchange their tiny phials and philters of purified Dark Iron for worldly goods and services.
Mistress Taint watched Chad stare gloomily out the windows, her glass eyes full of confusion. When she realized that her young charge wasn’t going to repeat the question –a question she naturally had not forgotten- she relented. “It started with your … departure.”
Chad rolled a languid hand. “I know this. You is tellin’ me when I first tellyported in.”
“That is a trick you shall have to explain, young master Chadsik. Though,” Mistress Taint raised a hand as her pale-skinned artiste started getting hot under the collar, “at a later date, of course. Its story time, yes it is.”
The robotic AI waited for Chadsik to settle back down onto the royal purple cushions, counted the seconds until his pale, pale eyes fell upon the City down below, watched as the memories of olden times in this world stole over him. “After you left, your Father was beside himself with sorrow and rage, young master Chadsik. He took to the streets himself instead of his metallic copies, beat in the heads of those misters and the occasional missus who’d won themselves a dollop or two of the Good Stuff.”
Chad traced a rainwater trickle down a pane of glass. That would be a beginning to the end, sure enough. The Platinum Brigade, they called themselves. Gearheads with the oomph to take a Platinum King, each one transformed into the most miraculous, fresh being. Where their maddened counterparts outside the walls of Arcadia bristled with crude augments that made them stronger and faster and damned near immortal, those inside the walls, those that’d gone head to head with King Blake’s proper-sized simulacrum … the first and only phial they’d ever drink cast loose all the rough and ready changes the Delicious Elixir had done, burned out the crudity, leaving behind … the best
If Dear Old Dad had gone out into Arcadia and beat even a third of the Platinum Brigade into the ground, well, chances are he’d also torn the Kingsblood right out of their bosom, gifting them with the true death. It were probably worse than all that, as well; with no Brigadiers about and with dear Old Dad disappeared, it were likely Arcade City were teetering on the edge of madness. Them shiny nobility had done good and great things
to keep the enclosed city up and running. Without ‘em, Chad was willing to bet good money there weren’t nearly as many people alive as once used to be.
“Why in the bloody hell would ‘e do that?” Chad muttered. He could –if he squinted just right- make out the gloomy old church he’d called Crow’s Nest and Cross. Still standing. Brilliant. “Wivvout …”
”Without the Brigade, Chadsik, Gearmen patrol the wild areas, and the Matrons do they best they can.” Taint’s words were clipped and short. Talk of the world outside made her distinctly uncomfortable, and with all Chad believed had been happening, that discomfort had to be deep as all get out now.
“’e down there, still, then? Killing people?” Chad thought of his dad, out there, roaming the streets, murdering. He grinned. Chad looked at Mistress Taint, who had her head tilted to the side like an attentive machine predator. “An’ even if ‘e is down there still pullin’ off ‘eads, it don’t explain all that fu … bloody damage.”
Taint shrugged, her shoulders going clickety-clack beneath her Matronly shawl. “If your father is still in this city, Chadsik, he hasn’t been seen by anyone of importance in close to a hundred years.”
Chad ate a shortbread bickie and looked over his shoulder at the Soul Machine. The thing that’d once been a Chadsik al-Taryin from a previous version of their Universe was nearly fully solidified now; once the final bit of essence was pulled from the strata between existences, his father’s machine pumped Dark Iron into the chamber, coating the shifting, swirling miasma of energy with a metallic frame. It was important to lock that essence in before moving it to where the King -and the King alone- began work on actually creating a Suit for Trinity.
King Blake used to joke that he was naught but an ironmonger, that the Suit’s creation rest solely in the hands of Arcadia’s resident madman genius.
